In a hair salon in the capital last week, two representatives of Cypriot intellectualism crossed paths: media personality Chrysanthos Tsouroulis and the narcissistic businessman who fancies himself a modern-day Confucius.
During their brief exchange of trivial banter – lasting barely a minute and delivered in the familiar cadence with which the self-enlightened guru imparts his wisdom to the plebeians – the two men managed to capture with clarity the grim reality of today’s Cyprus, where ignorance reigns alongside the arrogant superiority of the half-educated.
These individuals may indeed cluck like hens, yet they remain convinced that what emerges from their clever posteriors is not merely an egg, but an entire asteroid.
The Journalist and the Philosopher were mocking citizens protesting outside the Presidential Palace against President Christodoulides’s decision to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“I expected them to protest Erdogan’s visit instead,” the journalist quipped – a remark that, despite being made before a salon mirror, was no less serious than some statements made on television news programmes.
On the contrary! Considering that on Monday evening, during an embarrassingly amateurish political intervention on the 8:30 news bulletin, this same journalist demanded that the Greek government respond to Erdogan’s provocative claim that “there were no Greeks on the island; England brought them,” questioned why Christodoulides didn’t overturn the table during his meeting with Tatar after listening to talks of a two-state solution, and wondered whether the President was bothered that Tatar, after their meeting, returned to a “presidential palace” larger than our own – the salon comment seems positively profound by comparison!
The mantle of seriousness was next taken up by Efthymios Diplaros, deputy chairman of the supposedly liberal and European-minded Democratic Rally party (DISY).
Though not the sharpest mind at party headquarters – despite his CV boasting the discovery of both an “oral document” and a “dead corpse” – his zealous decades-long crusade against that eternal enemy, communism, is somewhat admirable.
And since I prefer to believe his most recent battles are waged in an effort to stem defections to ELAM – which has already poached nearly half the party – rather than due to the fixations and rigidities he carries from his days in DISY Limassol’s youth wing, I find them (in terms of enthusiasm, at least) somewhat more commendable.
The Deputy Chairman released a well-edited video taking a position on the major issue of protests against the Netanyahu meeting, because… “it’s time for politics with substance, not theatrical impressions” – a phrase reminiscent of the unforgettable actress Nana Georgiou.
Although Diplaros’s articulate statement was essentially incoherent, filled with inaccuracies and distortions, if his aim was to assert his presence in the unofficial internal party race for “the day after,” to slightly pander to his audience, and simultaneously to resubmit his credentials where he’s been submitting them in recent years, then his intervention must be deemed successful.
With all these salon politics and weighty interventions both inside and outside hair salons, we haven’t had time to properly address a significant political development: Marinos Sizopoulos’s “voluntary” withdrawal.
This is the man who in 2016 was favoured for the position of House Speaker, but whose momentum was blocked by the Presidential Palace and DISY, who instead installed the “I must protect my name” Demetris Syllouris.
This happened because, as the federalist Prodromos Prodromou explained at the time: “The decision was clear. The second highest state official could not be someone who opposes bi-zonal federation” – a statement that made even the straightest palm trees in the Municipal Garden double over with laughter and was recorded as one of the most ridiculous moments in our modern history.
Sizopoulos departs “triumphantly” from EDEK’s leadership just as “triumphantly” as he ascended in March 2015 with 60% of the vote and was re-elected in May 2017 with an “ethnarchic” 84%! Of course, in reality, the “triumphant 84%” of 2017 didn’t differ much from the 60% that had elevated him to EDEK’s presidency two years earlier.
To be precise, the difference between 2017’s 84% and 2015’s 60% was just 98 votes! In 2015, with George Varnavas as his opponent, Sizopoulos received 2,514 votes. In 2017, he received 2,612.
Considering that 1,047 more members participated in the 2015 vote than in 2017, it revealed that the “ethnarchic victory” wasn’t quite as triumphant as it was presented.
On the contrary, the conclusion drawn was that the Movement of Social Democrats EDEK was experiencing gradual shrinkage, with dissenters – those Sizopoulos hadn’t neutralised to consolidate his position – choosing either to abstain completely or to hop lightly away elsewhere rather than remain and form an opposition.
In conclusion, while Sizopoulos may have saved EDEK from financial bankruptcy (though much is whispered about how), his presidency rapidly accelerated the political bankruptcy of the once-proud EDEK.
This is a significant chapter that deserves our attention separately.
