AKEL is satisfied from Parliament’s rejection of privatizations bill
AKEL C.C. Press Office Spokesperson Georgios Loucaides
AKEL expresses its satisfaction with yesterday’s decision of the Cyprus House of Representatives to reject the monstrous Bill for privatizations. At the same time AKEL is fully aware that in the attempts to prevent the selling-off of our national wealth we have won a battle, but not the war.
We urge the government and the governing Democratic Rally party to respect the outcome of yesterday’s vote.
We urge them to respect the intention of the great majority of political forces, but also of society as well, that the government should pursue the renegotiation of the relevant Memorandum provision for imposing privatizations and seek alternative solutions.
We hope that the government and ruling forces will not follow their normal practice, that is to say, they should abandon their dogmatic and arrogant behaviour.
The Government and ruling forces must end their provocative attitude of ignoring the constant appeals made for almost a year made by the opposition for a dialogue to search for alternative solutions; that they will put an end to arbitrary stand they adopted until the last moment of the vote in the House, even towards those political forces who just sought some excuse to vote for the Bill to promote privatizations.
In addition, the government must without question end the practice of issuing blackmails, threats, intimidation and cultivating and spreading fear in society. First and foremost they must terminate these practices because this policy brutally undermines democracy. Secondly, because this has proved to be ineffective in practice, since neither society, nor all those disagreeing with them, are willing to become prey to their blatant blackmail. Thirdly, because if they have not yet realised it, they are in government and the damage they have done to the country’s economy when they were in opposition with the rampant alarmism and panic they had cultivated, today this has multiple impacts.
The government and the Democratic Rally party must therefore reconsider their position. We understand their efforts to serve the interests of big private interests, handing them our crucially important national wealth. We also understand their position that the Memorandum yoke could be their own political and ideological manifesto, whether the Troika was in Cyprus or not.
As a government, however, they are called upon to abandon their dogmatism and behave responsibly, searching through consensus and dialogue solutions that are beneficial to our country, people and society and not for the privileged few whose interests they unfortunately serve.
Besides, this is what they had pledged to do to society – to be assertive towards the Troika and not allow any privatizations. If even at this stage they decide to act in this way, as AKEL we reiterate once again our readiness to contribute with proposals and suggestions in the search for alternative solutions to avoid the sell-out of our national wealth. Otherwise, we stress, as we did all through the previous period, they will bear full and sole responsibility for any developments.
