Speech by the General Secretary of the C.C. of AKEL A. Kyprianou at the mass event on International Workers Day

AKEL C.C. Press Office, 1 May 2018, Nicosia

“Better 12 blue hours than 8 red hours” anti-communism cried when workers, toilers, peasants and the impoverished Cypriot poor masses rose up and struggled for an eight hour working day; when our country’s class-orientated trade union movement unfurled the banner that was raised for the first time in Chicago in 1886.

The struggles of the Cypriot workers’ movement are inextricably linked with the struggles of the People’s Movement of the Left of Cyprus. With the Communist Party of Cyprus-AKEL as an unwavering ally, the workers movement raised the banner that was unfurled in the demonstrations for the introduction of legislation on labour relations and Social Insurance in the early 1940’s. This banner of struggle was also raised at the mines of Lefka and Mavrovouni, the spinning sweatshops of Famagusta and the factories in Limassol. The workers movement filled the squares in 1958, with the banner held in the hands of thousands of Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, which was subsequently yet again stained with their blood.

Every Workers May Day, we feel proud of what our Movement achieved at the forefront of worker’s struggles in Cyprus.

Every Workers May we renew the oath that we will remain consistent and determined defenders of working people’s rights and gains.

Worker’s May Day in our era is different. We have to admit it. That red eight hour working day is some places is under threat and elsewhere it has been abolished. Especially for young workers and working people in the private sector, what we have achieved over the last decades is no longer self-evident. Unregulated working hours, work on Sundays, unpaid overtime, personal contracts, blackmail exerted for dismissals, half wages and a life which is increasingly being made even more difficult. That’s why we insist: the struggles are not over, the struggles are continuing!

The policies pursued by the Anastasiades-DISY Government have crushed gains and rights that have been won through fierce bloody struggles. Our challenge today is gradually through the organization and struggle of the working people to restore these gains. Our challenge is not to heap praise on our glorious history, but to write our own new history. Woe, if now when we need to regroup our forces, strengthen our organization, when it is the time for struggles to be waged to win what we deserve, we allow defeatism and fatalism get the better of us. Now is the time to stand up and be counted; to reach out to people in order to win the future; to give hope to working people again for a better life.

It’s enough for us to recall the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Economic and Financial Affairs report drawn up in the context of the European Semester 2018.

As regards social inequality, Cyprus records the worst results. The poor are becoming poorer and the rich richer.

The unemployment rate among young people and the long-term unemployed is very high in comparison to the average across the European Union.

Cyprus records one of the worst figures as far as the percentage of young people who are not working or aren’t being trained throughout the European Union.

Wages remain at 2002 levels, while the profits of capital have increased significantly.

We are among the first countries in the table of part-time or contract-based employment.

At the same time, poverty and social exclusion are registering high percentages among people with disabilities, while the percentages among children are rising too.

The gap in pensions between men and women has reached 49%. State structures and care programs for people with disabilities or the elderly are closing down one after the other. In fact we have even seen the following tragic development: the government is granting to the church state structures so that the church can set up private nurseries.

All this is the result of the policies implemented and ideological obsessions of the Anastasiades-DISY Government and their partners in the European Union.

Their goal since the time they waged attacks on the Easter bonus benefit granted by the Christofias government was to prepare the ground for the imposition of their ideological positions, the deregulation of labour relations and austerity.

Today AKEL and the People’s Movement of the Left are again declaring that we shall continue our resistance and struggles!

We are fighting for the rights of working people, against the sell-off of public wealth and property, against the dismantling of the welfare state and the deterioration and privatization of social insurance. We shall continue to fight for work with dignity and dignity at work!

From our gathering here, we will subsequently march to Ledra Palace to honor with our Turkish Cypriot compatriots International Worker’s Day. We are joining our voices and raising our fists in the air, persisting in our struggle! No more occupation! No more foreign armies, settlers and the deprivation of our people’s basic rights and freedoms! Enough is enough of neo-fascism and those forces and circles who are appeasing it. We’ve had enough of traitors baptized as heroes, while our heroes remain forgotten, with their sacrifice still not vindicated. We’ve had enough of all those purporting to be the only patriots, but who are tacitly compromising with the occupation. We’ve had enough of all those who are confounding our people with their “national-mindness”, but who day by day are surrendering our homeland to partition, Turkish expansionism and imperialism’s plans.

We are determined: we will not give away a single inch of our land to injustice. We demand a solution that will end the occupation and the colonialization; a solution based on the UN Resolutions, the High-Level Agreements, International and European Law; a solution that will demilitarize Cyprus and exclude interventions and guarantees from foreign powers; a solution that will reunite the land, the people, the institutions and the economy; a bi-communal, bizonal federal solution with political equality as described in United Nations texts; a solution that will lead to a united state, a continuation of the Republic of Cyprus, with a single sovereignty, a single international personality and a single citizenship.

Mr. Anastasiades must even at this stage realize the burden of his responsibility. He must do what has to be done, so that he won’t go down in history as the President of partition. Of course we do not relieve Turkey of its exclusive and long-standing responsibility for the non-solution of the Cyprus problem. Of course we disagree with the Turkish Cypriot side’s unacceptable positions. But we proclaim that the Greek Cypriot side is the one that wants a solution and reunification. It’s not enough just to say it. We have to be proving it in practice. Unfortunately, there are many questions being raised among a section of the international community about the Greek Cypriot side’s readiness for a solution. And regrettably, not only among those who want to protect Turkey, but also among friends of Cyprus.

Mr. Anastasiades has not been convincing of his consistency and readiness. Sooner or later we will pay a heavy price if he doesn’t do anything to reverse the impression he himself has formed as a result of his regressions and contradictions on the Cyprus problem.

Today we are sending out a message of solidarity to the working people, to the unemployed, to the people of labour and toil, to the immigrants and refugees; to all those who are struggling on a daily basis to make ends meet. We are here, standing firm and strong, and struggling with them for a better tomorrow. For the future we deserve!