No opposition party must permit government’s looting of public wealth and assets

 

Statement of Georgos Loucaides, AKEL C.C. Spokesperson

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 14th December 2015, Nicosia

 

The government of DISY Rally party and Anastasiades arbitrarily and without waging any political dialogue, is proceeding to the approval of yet more legislation in line with its machinations for the looting of public wealth and assets, more specifically within the context of unilateral decisions and commitments which it itself has made sure were included in the prerequisites of the next installment.

– When the government and ruling forces during the pre-election campaign were fighting to win the vote of the people, they pledged to prevent privatizations. Today they are denigrating and describing as “populists” all those consistently opposing the plundering of public wealth and assets.

– Up until recently they considered privatization as a necessary evil, lying that Christofias and AKEL are to blame for this. Now, they are even ahead of their Troika friends and associates, claiming that the plundering of public wealth they are promoting is supposedly necessary and a beneficial “modernization” reform.

– The government and DISY have always despised everything public/state owned and particularly workers’ rights, simultaneously denigrating any state financial support for public organizations. But today, to make the plundering of public wealth from private investors even more profitable, they pledge to shift on to taxpayer’s backs tens of millions Euros annually for the payroll of working people employed in the Semi-governmental organizations.

– The Minister of Finance pledged a week ago in Parliament that new jobs in the public sector will be frozen for 2016 too, obviously on the assessment that there is no relevant need for them. Today, however, the Cabinet approved a bill that provides for a “pledge” to recruit thousands of employees who will be forced to withdraw from Semi-governmental organizations

We repeat that what the DISY-Anastasiades government are promoting is nothing but the plunder and looting of public wealth that will take place at the expense of consumers, taxpayers, workers and the economy.

We hope that no opposition party will allow this looting to occur and that they won’t this time too search for pretenses and flimsy excuses, such as partial, initially, privatization, a position anyway that is DISY’s and the government’s declared objective, as the first decisive step towards the full plundering of public wealth and assets.