Address by Yiorgos Georgiou, AKEL Limassol District Secretary to the event/mobilization against the government’s machinations to sell-off Cooperatives
Tuesday 20 March 2018, Limassol
Friends and comrades,
Cooperative employees of Limassol,
We address a militant greeting to everyone. We thank you all on behalf of the AKEL Limassol District Organization for your mass participation in today’s mobilization and protest against the sell-off of Cooperatives.
The Cooperative movement in Cyprus has a long history spanning more than a century. It was founded and built by the common people, workers and the poor of that era. It was built with the pennies and shillings of the oppressed toilers suffering from the loan sharks, money lenders and exploitation.
In its historical path, it represented the main pillar of support to our people, the poor and the workers. The Cypriot people invested its dreams and aspirations in the Cooperative movement. The vast majority of our people built their home from a loan attained from Cooperatives. Most of the small and medium-sized businesses, not only enterprises, were established as a result of the Cooperative movement.
Of course Cooperatives has also faced problems, obstacles and troubles. However, they served with their actions and service their members and the entire Cypriot people!
The Cooperative movement has never committed crimes as the commercial banks did; crimes which drove Cyprus and its people to suffer the biggest economic tragedy!
Today, we have all gathered here to raise our voice and stand up, to send out a resounding NO to the selling off of Cooperatives!
The unilateral decision by the Cyprus Cooperative Bank to put Co-operatives up for sale represents the gravest of provocations.
How is it possible for the Finance Minister Haris Georgiades in December 2016 to state in the debate on the state budget that he will return the Co-operatives to citizens, their members and within such a short space of time to put them up for sale?
How is it possible with their constant declarations all through the election campaign to reassure the people and then suddenly overnight to put Cooperatives up for sale?
We want to warn the Cypriot people that this decision is a time bomb at the very foundations of the Cyprus economy.
The Cooperative movement constitutes the backbone of the economy of the Republic of Cyprus with deposits amounting to 12.5 billion Euros.
Imagine what it means in practice for the Republic of Cyprus to suddenly find itself without its own bank.
There is no other such example anywhere else in the world.
Mr. President, Mr. Anastasiades,
In 2013 in March you pledged that you wouldn’t proceed to a haircut on bank deposits and in the end you broke that pledge. In 2018 in March, while you were pledging to hand the Co-operatives back to its members, you once again broke the pledge you made.
We want you to know that we will not hand over Cooperatives without a fight.
Both within and outside the House of Representatives we will struggle night and day to save the Cooperatives.
We firmly believe that even at this stage second thoughts can be made. Solutions can and must be found provided that we are focused on serving the interests of Cyprus and its people.
Don’t leave Cyprus and the people without any pillar of support! We are now also in danger economically.
Don’t give in to the dictates of Brussels and the markets who aren’t concerned about the consequences on the member-states, but interested in taking away our identity and popular sovereignty.
Now is the time of assertion and resistance.
The Cooperatives are not up for sale – hands off them!
Cooperatives belong to their members, to the Cypriot people.
AKEL calls the Cypriot people, all co-operative working people to put up resistance and wage struggles.
Today we are beginning this struggle.
We will be on the streets if need be night and day.
The struggles, sacrifices and labour of the Cypriot people cannot and must not be sacrificed for the sake of privatizations and the neo-liberal policies of Mr. Anastasiades and DISY.
