The Government has legislative tools to combat corruption, but lacks the political will
Statement by Aristos Damianou, AKEL MP, after the meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Legal Affairs
8 September 2021, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia
“At the first official meeting of the Legal Affairs Parliamentary Committee with the new Minister of Justice and Public Order, we of course reiterated our wishes for good work and that there is a huge amount of work to be done by the Ministry. We noted that there are serious shortcomings that need to be addressed and, of course, we expressed our readiness to cooperate, all of us always respecting the fact that the Government submits proposals and the opposition judges, enriches, agrees or disagrees with them, as the case may be.
We focused primarily on the issues related to justice reform. It is given that the justice system in Cyprus is unfortunately in a state of collapse and this certainly creates the necessity to conclude the discussions on the reform. There are issues that are still open, there are disagreements, especially on the Supreme Court, on aspects of the reform, but at the same time there is also a readiness to continue the dialogue so as to bridge the differences, with the aim of arriving at bills that can be brought to the plenary of the House of Representatives.
We also discussed the bill on stamping out corruption. We reiterate that democracy, the State and the Government have enough legislative tools in its hands to fight corruption. It is not short of any legislative tools. What it does lack is the necessary political will. In any case, as far as the bill is concerned, we have tabled a number of proposals during the previous parliamentary term. The Minister has pledged to study them. A separate meeting is also imminent in order to study AKEL’s positions in more detail which enrich and strengthen the competences of the anti-corruption Authority being proposed. I consider that in October we will come back to the issue in the Legal Affairs Parliamentary Committee for the promotion of the bill.”
