The President and DISY congratulating each other about government’s economic policy is a provocation and an underestimation of people’s intelligence

 

Statement by AKEL MP and AKEL Political Bureau member Aristos Damianou

3 September 2022, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

DISY President Averof Neofytou was today generously congratulating the Finance Minister for the government’s supposedly successful management of the economy. We wonder why the President and the ruling DISY party dont feel comfortable speaking publicly and congratulating themselves about the Cyprus Investment Programme as well, which has become the biggest scandal of institutional entanglement/interwoven interests and political corruption. This was also part of their economic policy.

Given that the ten-year DISY government will soon be coming to an end, it would be useful to record in numbers, as the government ruling forces are also fond of doing, its economic achievements and those of the two would-be successors of Mr. Anastasiades and presidential candidates, Averof Neofytou and Nikos Christodoulides.

• The government ruling forces have collected €862m of additional tax revenue in the first seven months of 2022 alone from citizen’s pockets, due to the tax burden caused by the economic crisis, while by the end of the year they will have collected more than €1bn. Continuing to be socially insensitive and disregarding people’s needs, they have rejected the legislations approved by the majority in Parliament for a reduction in taxes.
• According to the income distribution index and the income inequality index for 2021, the share of income of the richest 20% of the population was 4 times higher than the income of the poorest 20%. As a result economic inequality has risen even further.
• According to the poverty and social exclusion index, more than 17% of the population live in households with available income below the poverty line, suffering severe material and social deprivation or with a low labour intensity index. Approximately one in five Cypriots live in poverty and misery, the middle class is disappearing, but Mr. Neophytou is celebrating.

Poverty, price hikes, foreclosures, the inability to acquire housing, job insecurity and the inadequate “minimum wage” are all an integral part of the government ruling force’s socio-economic policy. The President and DISY congratulating each other is both a provocation and an underestimation of people’s intelligence.