Knives came out between the government and the opposition during today's meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Internal Affairs of the Parliament, during which the issue of the referral of part of the bill on the reform of local government by the President of the Republic was put up for discussion.
The Akamas was the main reason for the opposition parties to engage in a verbal confrontation with Nikos Nouri after the Minister of Interior refused to present before the Parliamentary Committee the notorious plan for the region, despite the fact that in its referral the President calls for its acceptance.
In fact, Nikos Nouris explained that this particular differentiation made on the part of the Parliament, completely reverses this government plan, while the chairman of the Committee, Aristos Damianou, said that with this referral "the government with its hands takes out its eyes".
As we learn, already AKEL, DIKO and the Movement of Ecologists have expressed their intention to vote against the impeachment of the President of the Republic.
Specifically, after the end of the meeting, in his statements, the Minister of Interior said that as far as "Akamas was concerned, it should have received different treatment, that it should remain as a separate entity of a cluster of communities and not be trichotomized in the manner envisaged by the passage of this particular bill by the Parliament".
"In addition," he noted, "we have also submitted our concern that through this particular enactment, explaining the reasons for the referral, the Municipality of Peyia is essentially depopulated, since from the almost 17 thousand population attributed to it by the government proposal is reduced to 7 thousand, which is expected to create problems of sustainability, an indicator that is extremely important in terms of the issue of sustainability."
He added that for the Municipality of Peyia they consider that "the aid with commercial premises (1630) that we had attributed to it through the merger with the communities of Chloraka and Ebas, are drastically reduced with this diversification and will create serious problems."
"Therefore", continued Mr. Nouris, "our argument as a government turns on the fact that the specific region (Akamas), which until now and for many years has been operating under a specific plan, is delimited by the administrative boundaries of the specific 8 communities of the Akamas region. These communities have specific, common characteristics... So this area has been the subject of discussion for many, many years by the departments involved, and we have finally reached the final stage of establishing the evolution of the plan that existed previously into a local plan for Akamas, so that we can make it possible, on the one hand, to enhance the forest park of the area and, on the other hand, to strengthen the viability of the specific communities."
"The specific differentiation made on the part of the Parliament, we believe that it completely reverses this government planning. I will not dwell on the legal arguments, these have been answered by the Legal Service," he added.
He pointed out that the essence of the matter is that as a government they disagree with other arrangements and other entities that have been differentiated at the stage of passing the bill, nevertheless "judging precisely that we do not want to torpedo the magnificent effort of the local government we focused our interest only on this particular issue for which there are a lot of peculiarities."
Damianou: "The government with its hands is pulling out its eyes"
For his part, Aristos Damianou, chairman of the Parliamentary Committee on Interior and AKEL MP, Aristos Damianou, said after the end of the session that in view of the debate on the President's referral to the Committee, he asked the Minister of Interior to send the local Akamas plan under preparation.
"I regret to note," Damianou explained, "that while this plan is being invoked as the reason for referral, the Ministry of Interior, citing a regulation in the legislation relating to the operation of the Planning and Zoning, has refused to submit the plan under preparation to Parliament. But they otherwise demand that the referral be accepted, citing a draft that Parliament has never seen."
"I overlook the fact that public officials, under the relevant legislation, are required to submit evidence. And of course, because we are political beings, the evasion that we did not ask an official but the minister for everything we did through several months of cooperation, I believe that this response was not appropriate nor does it convey the necessary institutional respect for the House of Representatives," he added. Damianou.
Damianou also said, "we regret to observe that the rich legal science cannot trump logic for the answer we were given is that it is at the President's discretion a la carte, even if multiple unconstitutionalities are alleged, to choose only one to refer only one to Parliament, you realize that this is not legal science but alchemy."
Meanwhile, Mr. Damianou stressed that from the very first moment they appealed to the President of the Republic to withdraw the referral, "because we knew and we know - and now we have documents on this - that the Aeolus box would open and it has opened... because a number of local authorities who disagree with this reform, drawing, unfortunately, arguments from the referral of the President of the Republic, may take the referral to the courts altogether."
"The government with its hands is pulling out its eyes and all the effort we collectively made to get a reform passed may go to waste," he stressed. Damianou.
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
Source
