AKEL GS: The Government’s handling of the pandemic is wrong

2 August 2020, DIALOGOS web site

The government’s handling of the pandemic is wrong and the support it provides to SME’s and working people is insufficient, said the General Secretary of AKEL Andros Kyprianou, speaking at the 27th Conference of the Student Section of EDON Youth Organisation.

A. Kyprianou said that AKEL was recorded solutions and submitted proposals in writing in a report, but the government did not make use of it.

The Anastasiades government, he continued, initially underestimated the danger and “cases had to occur, followed by a general outcry after the first Presidential television address, for the government to approve decisions and take measures.”

“When the government ruling forces started listening to the experts/scientists, the correct measures were taken,” he added. “Of course, the views of the scientific team were listened to to the extent that the government’s interests were served in order to promote the perception in society that it was effective in confronting the pandemic. When they felt that the problems were being overcome, scientists were sidelined and political decisions were being taken”, he noted.

As the General Secretary of AKEL said “we must draw the correct lessons from the problems caused by the pandemic and the way in which we had to tackle them”.

“The first lesson, which I think anyone can easily draw from the pandemic, is that if it were not for public hospitals with all the problems that the Anastasiades government and the ruling DISY party have burdened them with over the last seven years, there would not have been any chance of confronting the pandemic,” said A. Kyprianou.

“The health professionals and workers, who were ridiculed by the Anastasiades government and DISY, the derogative statements by DISY President Averof Neophytou about hospital staff fighting for their rights and demands, gave everything they did and did not have in adverse conditions to confront the pandemic,” he underlined.

The General Secretary of AKEL also characterized as erroneous the decision to transform the Famagusta Hospital into a reference hospital, but also the cuts imposed in the state budget allocated to the public health system by 600 million Euros. As he said, “the government ruling forces decided to designate it as a hospital to confront the pandemic which did not have the bare essentials required to fulfill its mission. It didn’t have an Intensive Care Unit, intensive care specialists, nor did it have other doctors specializing in various fields. It lacked many other basic things to become the Referral Hospital”.

“And despite the fact that the pandemic appears to be returning, huge problems continue to exist, with responsibilities on both the Ministry of Health and the state health services organisation OKYPY for the problems in public hospitals,” he added.

The second conclusion drawn from the pandemic, said the General Secretary of AKEL, is that vital sectors of the economy must have a state character, otherwise, as it is, if we place our hopes in the private sector everything will collapse, because the private sector’s driving force is serving specific interests and the maximization of profit and not to support society.

“We must not simply protect the public sector, but also support it,” he stressed.

The third conclusion to be drawn is that the protection of the environment is of paramount importance.

As the General Secretary of AKEL said in another part of his speech, “it has been demonstrated once again that the capitalist economic model cannot solve the problems of democracy”.

“DISY President Averof Neophytou says and boasts that it is because Anastasiades is the President of the Republic and DISY is the ruling party that Cyprus managed to deal with the pandemic with far fewer problems than other countries. He focuses on virtual and not on actual reality. Britain and the United States failed to confront effectively the pandemic because they had dismantled the public health system.” This, he pointed out, was DISY’s intention too and had AKEL not resisted, Cyprus would have the same fate as the USA and Great Britain”, Mr. Kyprianou emphasized.

He also said that the government’s support for SME’s was inadequate, at a time when many companies are in danger of closing down.

AKEL did not just focus on the economy but also submitted proposals on education issues, for which the government, as Andros Kyprianou said, “was wavering, but also acted criminally after placing children with special abilities in an inferior position”.

He said that AKEL submitted proposals on issues affecting farmers/breeders, as well as proposals on the environment in an effort to contribute in a constructive way to the whole effort to confront the pandemic.

As regards the Cyprus problem, the General Secretary of AKEL said that Turkey’s provocative actions have never been so intense as now, but the government is pinning its hopes for a solution on third parties.

“Today we have reached the point where Turkey is behaving more provocatively than ever before, but Cyprus’ partners are appeasing it,” he said.

“If we cannot resolve the Cyprus problem with Turkey, we are heading towards partition. This permits Turkey to control exclusively a large part of our homeland”, he continued