by Bananiot » Sun Dec 09, 2007 11:56 pm
This is how Patroclos saw things:
WE HAVE said it before and we’ll say it again. The Ethnarch’s government has told so many lies in its five years in office it would be pointless to apologise every time it was caught. It would make more sense if it apologised on the rare occasions when it unintentionally said the truth, for not living up to the expectations of the people.
Our government has been caught lying on countless occasions, but apologised only once through spokesman Basil Palmer – about legal services the family law office was providing to the company seeking the LNG contract from the family government. There are thoughts of naming the day, ‘Truth Day’ and declaring it a public holiday, so the government would not have to make any official statements.
Our government gave a recital of lies in the last seven days, conducted by Ethnarch Munchausen himself. Asked by hacks last Sunday about Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt’s intention to pursue the issue of the isolation of the TCs, the Ethnarch said: “Bildt’s positions are different from Sweden’s because I spoke to the Prime Minister of Sweden.”
In short, he was claiming that Sweden’s Foreign Minister was pursuing positions that were not supported by his government. The Swedes took great exception to this claim, and asked our ambassador in Stockholm for explanations. He claimed that the comments had been misinterpreted and that Tassos had not made any insinuations about Bildt.
Not surprisingly, the Swedes, having read the transcript of what Tassos said, did not believe our ambassador. Their ambassador in Cyprus subsequently issued a statement, which, in diplomatic language, called Tassos a liar.
This is what he said: “Sweden has one common foreign policy, decided by the government and executed by the Foreign Minister. Any other interpretation is unfounded.” Sweden also announced that our Foreign Minister’s visit to Stockholm, scheduled for December 18, had been postponed.
Our Ethnarch’s off-the cuff remark, aimed at showing voters that he was in control of events, created a diplomatic incident and there was only one way of limiting the embarrassment he brought upon himself – telling a few more lies.
ENTER Government Spokesman Palmer, who is turning out to be one of the most incompetent liars in the world, something that makes him totally unsuitable for the position he holds. If you can’t lie competently, like Lillikas for instance, you have no business acting as this government’s spokesman.
“The President did not say that different opinions existed within the Swedish government,” Palmer said. This position was repeated by Tassos the following day, despite the existence of a tape of what he had said. There is almost an element of nobility, something genuinely heroic, in telling such brazen lies.
Pity you could not say the same about Palmer’s explanation about the postponement of Erato’s visit to Stockholm. “The reason the meeting did not happen is because Mr Bildt was going to the Annapolis conference,” he said on Thursday. Nobody told him that the conference took place on November 27, while the Erato’s visit was scheduled for December 18.
Palmer may have weakness in getting his dates right – read SBM – but in this instance there are mitigating circumstances. He did not know that local hacks had been informed of the date the visit was due to take place by the Swedish embassy, so Annapolis seemed like a pretty convincing excuse.
Palmer was given the next day off and the Ethnarch handled the issue personally. He said that the date for Erato’s visit had not been finalised as she was still in contact with the Swedes in an effort to find a suitable date. December 18 was a suggestion but had never been finalised.
But if December 18 had not been agreed as the date of Erato’s visit, was the Swedish ambassador being economical with the truth when he said that the December 18 visit was postponed? Because he gave the impression that not only had a suitable date been found, but it had also been finalised. You just can’t trust these Swedes to tell the truth.
WE HAVE had many problems with Sweden, said Foreign Ministry permanent secretary Alecos Zenonos on a CyBC chat show on Friday. When the Ethnarch finds himself in a bit of a difficult spot domestically, he gets civil servants to defend him.
Zenonos was sent to the Presidential Propaganda Corporation to tell viewers of all the diplomatic problems Sweden’s implied pro-Turkish stance had caused us at the EU and at the UN. For a career diplomat, he was pretty outspoken about Sweden’s hostile behaviour towards our government, the aim, quite clearly being to justify the Ethnarch’s bizarre comments and to cover up his diplomatic bungling.
Hearing an ‘impartial’ civil servant having a go at Sweden, the voters would not only rally around the Ethnarch but support him for having a go at our new-found enemy, which is currently involved in negotiations for accession into the Anglo-American axis of evil. Given the rate at which the Ethnarch is pissing off foreign governments, it will not be long before UN resolutions are calling for an end to the isolation of the Greek Cypriots.
The more you idiots hate Papadopoulos the more it shows that he is the right president for Cyprus. Thank you for contributing to the pro-Papadopoulos campaign 
