Instead of looking for excuses, let them apply the laws

Statement by Aristos Damianou, AKEL MP and Chairman of the Parliamentary Internals Affairs Committee

9 February 2024, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

For two years now, as AKEL we have been pointing out and developing our activity accordingly in the Parliamentary Internal Affairs Committee, warning about the need to speed up the procedures for implementing the Local Government Reform. A reform which, as we have repeatedly said, does not express the absolute positions of the political parties, the government, the Union of Municipalities and the Union of Local Communities, but a minimum convergence that was agreed because only in this way could such a major reform be implemented.

So today, just a few months before the elections and the implementation of the Reform on 1 July 2024, it is politically erroneous for the Interior Minister, instead of overseeing and insisting on the strict implementation of the Reform, to devalue it through his public statements.

Everyone’s duty at this precise time is to work on the implementation of the laws and not to look for any excuses for whatever real problems that exist in the laws and which can be examined and corrected after the elections. After all, as the responsible Minister knows very well, serious problems do not arise from the laws but from the expediencies served and the incompetence of those who are called upon to implement them.

We take this opportunity to once again remind everyone that Parliament is still waiting for the Interior Ministry of Interior to submit the laws of the Reform to be implemented, for which obviously neither Parliament, nor the parties, but the Executive Power itself are responsible.

09.02.2024