AKEL GS: After briefing and consulting us, maybe we can agree

The President must specify what he means by decentralization

20 November 2020, DIALOGOS website

The General Secretary of AKEL A.Kyprianou challenged the President of the Republic to clarify which competences he wants to decentralize, so that AKEL can see if it can agree, considering that “from what has been agreed only one or two competences can be transferred to the components entities so that we can keep the state united, to have a single sovereignty, a single international personality and of course a single citizenship”. More specifically, in an interview with ‘Alphanews’, Andros Kyprianou recalled that “the late Tassos Papadopoulos had reached an agreement on 11 competences and responsibilities of the central government. Demetris Christofias because we were talking about a strong central government, a strong federation, increased these competences to 19 -20 and Nikos Anastasiades took them to 27.

Now Mr. Anastasiades himself, who increased these competences to 27, is saying that we should go to a decentralized federation. That means reducing the competences and responsibilities of the central government. “Our question to Mr. Anastasiades for the last 3-4 years is quite simple: what competences and responsibilities of the central government do you want to give to the constituent entities? Tell us so that we can discuss, we may perhaps reach an agreement. To date, he has not clarified what he wants.

We disagree with this approach, believing that only one or two competences that have been agreed upon can be transferred to the constituent entities to keep the state united, so that it will have a single sovereignty, a single international personality and, of course, a single citizenship. These are extremely important as the powers and responsibilities that have been agreed upon, because with the exception of two powers and responsibilities, this chapter is agreed upon. We are ready to listen to Mr. Anastasiades and let’s see if we can agree”.