AKEL the only party to vote against the Cyprus-Israel Cooperation Agreement on security issues
Yesterday 3rd December the majority of the Plenary Session of the House of Representatives voted approved a law of ratification for the Cyprus-Israel Cooperation Agreement on public security issues.
24 MP’s voted in favour (ruling DISY party, extreme-right ELAM, Democratic Party, Solidarity Movement, Citizen’s Alliance), 13 against (AKEL), while 4 MP’s abstained (Ecologists and the socialdemocratic Party EDEK).
Before the vote, AKEL MP Aristos Damianou stated the following:
“The Parliamentary Group of AKEL will vote against this bill.
We must say to those who know that this is a law of ratification, so therefore it has an increased legal force in the Republic, with all that this implies with regards human rights and common legislation.
When we vote for the expansion of cooperation with the State of Israel – and that in itself is not an issue – we must also consider the content of what we are voting for.
Such was the desire of the Government to pass this law of ratification that even the views and concerns expressed by state officials regarding the protection of human rights have been overlooked. There are concerns about the protection of personal data and human rights in relation to the exchange of information. There are problems with the interpretation that the state of Israel itself gives to the term terrorist.
And those in this House who have at times supported the rights of the Palestinian people must take this into account when voting on this agreement.
And for the most part a fundamental principle of international law regarding the obligation of reciprocity in the implementation of a bilateral or international multilateral convention with regards the State of Israel itself will not be fulfilled because it is simply not bound by the protection of personal character data, their way of processing and storage.
For all these reasons, AKEL will vote against this agreement and I call on my colleagues, I repeat, who from time to time have expressed a political position on what the state of Israelis doing, for example, in Palestine, which with this law the state of Israel considers terrorists have second, wiser and more just thoughts.”
Characteristically ultra-right ELAM stated that Cyprus has been building a “strategic relationship” with Israel “in the interests of the Cypriot Hellenism and some people should finally get away from the 1970s”!!
Replying to the extreme-right, AKEL MP A. Damianou stated, inter alia, that “ELAM talking about the 1970’s and dictators is like describing its own political CV”.
According to what was stated at the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee, cooperation between the two countries becomes more substantial on contemporary issues related to the security sector. The agreement was signed on May 8, 2018, in Nicosia.
