The struggle in Cyprus and Belgium
AKEL meeting in Larnaca
At a very successful meeting held at the Local club “Promitheas” in Larnaca last Tuesday, the President of the Worker’s Party of Belgium (PTB/PVDA) Peter Mertens outlined and presented the social and political struggles in Belgium. Opening the meeting, Andros Kyprianou, General Secretary of the C.C. of AKEL, stressed that PTB/PVDA is the only party that goes beyond the nationalist lines between the two Belgian communities and operates across the whole country. Furthermore, the General Secretary of AKEL stated that for AKEL, “with the Workers Party of Belgium we are connected by a common ideological approach, as well as by our faith in the ability of working people to reverse injustice and march together with society to bring a world of social justice; the world of socialism. We share a common understanding of the current tasks of our Parties to organize the resistance against the anti-people’s, neoliberal policies against our peoples and more specifically against working people.”
Referring to the difficult conditions for the peoples and Cyprus as well, the General Secretary of AKEL said that, “real hope can be created through the struggle of the peoples and the Parties of our type which challenge in practice the dominant ideology of the unbridled market economy and the Pandora’s Box of oppression that it has unleashed. It is for this reason that AKEL is struggling with consistency to create on a European level the preconditions for the effective challenging of the ruling policies to the benefit of the peoples.”
The President of the Workers Party of Belgium Peter Mertens began his speech by analysing the social and political conditions in Belgium. He focused on the fact that just in Brussels alone one third of children are born into poverty, while in Belgium 600,000 people are unemployed; indeed at a time when in 2014 statistics reveal the existence of 12,000 new multimillionaires. The Belgian Government is seeking to increase retirement age to the 67th year, curb the Automatic Cost of Living Allowance, while an ordinary cleaning lady is proportionately being taxed more than a multinational company. The political reply of PTB/PVDA is the development and support of strikes and demonstrations against the destructive policies of austerity pursued by the European Union and the Belgian government. During the recent strikes alone 120,000 people participated in these mobilisations, protesting for their rights at work and other demands.
The meeting was organized by the AKEL District Committees of Larnaca and Famagusta, along with the International Relations Department of the C.C. of AKEL
