SOMETIMES it is very difficult to understand the logic behind certain government decisions. The decision to renovate the Nicosia Conference Centre and the adjacent, derelict Philoxenia Hotel, at a cost to the taxpayer of €20.5m is a case in point. The renovation project would be managed and paid for by the government, which would use it for the hosting of events during Cyprus’ presidency of the EU in second half of 2013... Read on

“WE ASTOUNDED the world in 1990 and in 1994, and we shall do so again,” wrote former South African president F.W. de Klerk on the 20th anniversary of the day in February, 1990 when he announced the end of the apartheid system. But in 1990 and in 1994 the astonishment was about the fact that disaster had been avoided, and even now it is not astonishment at the country’s success.
South Africa has the second-highest murder rate in the world (after Colombia), the education system is one of the worst in the world, and AIDS accounts for 43 per cent of all deaths. It may be true that South Africa is doing better than was expected, but that only shows how low expectations were when Nelson Mandela was freed from prison twenty years ago this month... Read on

SOME MONTHS ago, the Minister of Health Christos Patsalides called a news conference to present a study that was supposedly aimed at tackling cancer. This was an embarrassingly superficial document, consisting of vague generalities which betrayed the little thought that had been put into the ministry’s otherwise well-intentioned initiative. We have heard nothing about it since it was announced last year, which should come as no surprise given its lack of depth and focus... Read on

LYNDON B. Johnson, the 36th president of the US of A, defended his decision of keeping the mighty J. Edgar Hoover as head of the FBI with the memorably crude comment: “Better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.”
This may have also been the main motive of the comrade wanting to keep EDEK and DIKO in his government alliance – EDEK officially departed from the alliance on Monday – but LBJ’s wisdom did not apply to our unpredictably, crazy country. Let’s face it, EDEK may have been in the tent but it still insisted on pissing inside: just like DIKO has been doing for close to two years... 13 comments

BROAD meetings of the newly formed National Committee for Employment, consisting of bureaucrats, union bosses and employers’ representatives appear to have become the government’s favoured method of tackling unemployment.
This creates the impression that the so-called social partners are united in the efforts being made to keep the numbers of jobless under control, while allowing the government to share out the blame for rising unemployment, rather than be burdened with all of it. It also enables the Labour Minister to appear impartial on industrial relations despite the fact that she was a union official who, by her own admission, still consults her former colleagues before finalising labour policy... Read on

WAVERING between opinions and action, it has become common to hear Cypriots make demands for a settlement to their national question from their government and outside powers, but it is rare to witness one ask what one can do for Cyprus to help achieve a solution to the national question….
This approach has haunted every peace process since they began. But this week a senior politician and DISY MEP Ioannis Kasoulides set a lustrous example for others to follow when he offered to give up his European Parliament seat to a Turkish Cypriot if we reach a Cyprus settlement... 16 comments

ONE WEIGHTY decision that the world will need to make in 2010 is whether to support an idea raised by Anatoly Perminov, the head of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, to launch an unmanned mission to redirect a large asteroid that might collide with Earth after 2030.
At more than 360 metres in diameter, the asteroid, Apophis, is a dozen times larger than the Tunguska space object (presumably a meteorite or comet) that devastated a large part of eastern Siberia a century ago. As far as can be determined, that object detonated on June 30, 1908, with the power of a nuclear weapon, felling 80 million trees over a 2,000-square-kilometer area... Read on

SCROOGE weather on the night of February 3 and we were snuggled up early in bed when the telephone rang.
My wife eventually answered the call, which was from one of her many Chinese friends, Jenny, saying that her flatmate, Lulu, had just been arrested.
Diminutive, plump yet extremely agile, 48-year-old Lulu had given the migration policeman a good run for his money, over 200 metres before the towering officer finally nailed her in the back streets of Ayioi Omoloyites, a notorious immigrant ghetto.
Fearful of a swoop, Jenny had hurriedly vacated their apartment. Would we go and collect Lulu’s passport and deliver it to Migration Police off Athalassas Avenue?
How would we gain access to the flat?... Read on

REFUGEE Meletis Apostolides took a risk when he decided to sue David and Linda Orams because they had built villa on his land in Turkish-occupied Lapithos. His subsequent decision to apply to a British court for the execution of the Cyprus court order and the positive outcome – after the ruling of the European Court of Justice – was greeted as a triumph of justice and the principles of the European Union.
The court decision recognised the right to ownership and put the brakes on the continuing development of Greek Cypriot properties in the north. The legal value of the decision is significant, but if it is not utilised rationally, it could turn into the nightmare of the Cyprus problem... 47 comments

But are we credible when we plead for discounts on our obligations and pay penalties for our violations?
FOR YEARS now, Cyprus has been a source of problems for the world community and the international organisations it joins: it is rarely a source of solutions.
Whether it is the UN, the EU or other international organisations, they expect us to create problems and we expect them to come up with the solutions. We are content with this division of labour: it fits our small size, our culture of low expectations of ourselves and the mindset that others are to be blamed for our problems and that the world owes us a solution that fits our specifications regardless of our mistakes... 3 comments