NOBODY could have imagined that the first ever visit of a German Chancellor to the People’s Republic of Kyproulla would have sparked the euphoric celebrations we witnessed on Tuesday and Wednesday among the bash-patriotic chattering classes.
The day after the visit we expected the state broadcaster to start morning shows on radio and TV by playing ‘Deutschland Deutschland uber alles’ (apologies to German readers, but I do not know the PC command for putting the two dots above the ‘u’), but we were disappointed.
The Lazarus patriotic show, however, did not let us down. Its presenter was so ecstatic over Angela Merkel’s pro-Greek Cypriot comments that for the first time in the show’s 20-year history, he played a German song, but do not ask its title or what it was saying; it was most definitely not by Kraftwerk.
Politis won the award for the best front-page headline the following day, with ‘Angelos i Angela’ (Angela the angel) as all papers highlighted the ‘tough language’ directed at the Turkish stance in the Cyprob.
In the news conference she gave at the Palast des Volkes in Nicosia she praised the comrade president’s efforts to reach an agreement and censured the Turks for not responding. As an added bonus, she said the Turks should forget about the opening of any new chapters in their accession negotiations, as long they refused to implement the Ankara Protocol.
It was stirring stuff, boosted by the hostile knee-jerk reaction of the Turks. Within a couple hours Prime Minister Erdogan was accusing our German angel of being ignorant about the Cyprob and not knowing what she was talking about – triumphant confirmation that the angelic Angela was on our side.
After this showing, Chancellor Merkel replaced Erich Honecker as the Greek Cypriots’ most-loved German leader of all time.
EVEN the commies of AKEL were prepared to forgive her for turning into a neo-liberal, right-wing capitalist despite being brought up in East Germany and being indoctrinated with the ideals of Stalinism. After all, during her visit, she had publicly praised “the courage, creativity and initiative” shown by our comrade leader.
But before her arrival there was great skepticism. On Tuesday, Phil columnist Nicos Tokas, wrote what many of his commie comrades were thinking. “Personally, I don’t like Angela Merkel because, while she was born and lived in former East Germany and should have had a full socialist upbringing, devouring unlimited quantities of Lenin and the other ‘fathers’ of communism so as to become for life, a correct and traditional comrade in everything…
“However this lady strayed and today represents what is most conservative and capitalist. Germany is like the ‘mother’ who even eats her own children – her all-powerful, economically and industrially, country sucks with its exports the wealth of her poor partners in the EU and on top of this holds a rod with which she beats them mercilessly because of their budget deficits.”
In his column on Thursday, Tokas, surprisingly, had forgotten all this. “Merkel, after all, is not such a shrew, as many believed or suspected, nor did she punch us, as many thought she would,” he wrote. As for her praise of the comrade’s stance at the talks, “we are talking about unheard of and unexpected, clear and momentous political support from the leader country of the EU”.
We won’t mention that on bad days the leader country eats her children, or beats them mercilessly, when they spend all their pocket money.
ONE PAPER identified a golden opportunity for turning Germany into an “important strategic partner” of Zypern. Simerini, took a break from calling for the forging of a Cyprus-Greece-Israel alliance saying that Zypern, with the “necessary planning and carving of the relevant policy, could and should move so that Germany becomes an important strategic ally”.
But how would France react to the creation of a Cyprus-German axis? The paper obviously forgot the defence agreement that was signed by the Ethnarch’s government a few years ago and was hailed as a new chapter in Chypre’s development as regional super-nuisance. Would President Sarkozy, expected to visit later in the year, not consider it a snub?
If he voices more momentous support for our position on the Cyprob than Merkel we may be persuaded to re-activate the defence agreement, as France does not eat her children.
THE LUNATIC reaction of the Turks in the end stole the show. A couple of hours after Merkel’s momentous statement, Erdogan launched a public attack on her telling her that she knew nothing about the prob and should have consulted her predecessor before talking. A statement by the German foreign ministry, aimed at appeasing the Turks, failed abysmally. On Friday Erdogan had still not calmed down and raised the stakes by saying “we expect Merkel to apologise to the Turkish side”. These Turks are so insecure they cannot even allow us enjoy a small and meaningless triumph.
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