The referral of part of the Local Government Reform Law by President Nicos Anastasiades was at the centre of today's session of the Parliament's Interior Committee.
Minister of Interior[/B] Nikos Nouris participated in the session, conveying to the members of the Committee the government's position that the reform of local self-government is a huge achievement for which the executive and the legislature worked together, adding that "with the impeachment of the President of the Republic, not only do we not want to jeopardise this achievement, but on the contrary we want to strengthen it".
In his statements after the meeting, the Minister said that "the President made this particular referral because through the arguments we developed in the Commission we demonstrated that the particular entity called Akamas should be treated differently, it should remain as a separate entity of a cluster of communities and not be trichotomized."
"In addition, we have also submitted our concern that through this particular enactment, explaining exactly the reasons for the referral, the Municipality of Pegeia is effectively depopulated, since from almost 17.000 population assigned to it by the government proposal is reduced to around 7,000, which is expected to create problems of sustainability, "he added, to add that "we believe that the reinforcement with commercial premises that we had given him through the merger with the communities of Chloraka and Ebas with 1,630 commercial premises, which are drastically reduced by this diversification, will create serious problems for them."
Mr. Nouris said that the Government has reached the final stage of the evolution of the plan that previously existed in the Akamas Local Plan in order to enable the enhancement of the natural park of the area and strengthen the viability of these communities, arguing, however, that this particular differentiation, which was made by the House of Representatives, completely reverses the above government planning.
"The crux of the matter is that we as a government may have disagreed 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 this grand effort to reform local government, we focused our interest only on this particular issue, for which there are a number of peculiarities that do not exist in any other entity in the Republic of Cyprus," he said, adding that "with the trisection of the area of Laonas, which has been precipitated by this vote, this area instead of being governed by a single local plan, will essentially be governed by four urban plans, Pafos, Peyia, Akamas and the rural plan, which will create enormous difficulties in terms of development policy and implementation of infrastructure projects in this area.
"With the way in which this legislation has been passed", the Minister continued, "the House of Representatives negates all these convergences and additionally creates pressure for intensification of development in these sensitive areas, since it integrates communities of Akamas with the specific characteristics into a municipality with predominantly developmental characteristics, that of Peyia. In addition, it clearly exacerbates the problem of urbanization, something that the Government wants to address with the specific plans that it promotes in our mountainous and disadvantaged areas, since the way in which the placement of the communities within the municipality of Peyia was done will give incentives to the residents of the specific entity to move to the urban center, Peyia, instead of remaining in the communities.
In conclusion, Mr. Nouris said that the impeachment of the President of the Republic is not only valid, but is a measure to strengthen the reform of local government, while calling on the House of Representatives and the parliamentary parties to enable the government to proceed with the publication of the Akamas Local Plan, which will give the Cyprus National Park "all those characteristics that we have been trying to give for years and still have not succeeded".
The Chairman of the Internal Affairs Committee Aristos Damianou said that "the effort we made collectively, parliament, the executive and the Union of Municipalities and Communities to get the necessary reform in local government passed after a decade is not sufficient in the face of certain interests", arguing that the President's impeachment itself is rife with inaccuracies and flimsy legal arguments.
"On the substance of the issue, from the very first moment we appealed to the President of the Republic to withdraw the impeachment because we knew and we know that it would open a can of worms and it has opened because a number of local authorities disagree with this reform, unfortunately drawing arguments from the impeachment of the President of the Republic may take the impeachment as a whole to court," said the AKEL MP, adding that "all the effort we have collectively made to get a reform voted for may go to waste".
Stating that AKEL will reject the impeachment of the President of the Republic, he appealed to the President of the Republic not to proceed with a petition to the Supreme Court, "which would definitively put a stone in the reform effort".
DISY MP Nikos Sykkas said that, after a makeshift amendment and a selective sensitivity a month before the local government reform is to be driven to the plenary, "some people for their own reasons, and not for the reasons they invoke, whether it concerns the Government or the Minister, have moved to an amendment which, while recognizing that the municipalities of Akamas number eight, have managed to bifurcate them, placing four in the Municipality of Peyia and the other four in the Municipality of Chrysochos".
"So the questions should be asked of those who so sloppily decided to bisect the communities of Akamas having the audacity to blame this Government. The bottom line is that we should not be scaremongering about local government reform from a logic with a significant legal basis for impeachment," he added, concluding that DISY will continue its reform programme, "a programme that the country needs through the big picture and not through sketchy amendments, decisions and perceptions."
DIKO MP Christos Seneces called the President's decision to exercise his constitutional right to partially refer the laws related to local government reform an extremely unpleasant development. "This is a selective sensitivity of the executive which opens the Aeolian can of worms and mines the effort to implement the reform of local self-government," he added, noting that now with the very same reasoning "entities that have reservations and objections with the reform regulations that concern them can justify their own different claims."
"This referral is a gesture to the political forces[/B] which have made significant compromises in order to find the necessary convergences and to serve the great purpose of the reform. Therefore, as DIKO we make a last appeal to the executive to withdraw the referral and not to jeopardize the implementation of the local government reform. Otherwise, it will bear full responsibility for the consequences," he said.
DPA MP Marinos Mousiuttas[/B] noted that the referral made by the President of the Republic "leaves questions about the reasons why this referral is made because allegations are made which are valid in other cases, but these have not been referred."
"Of course it is the President's right to refer any part he wants, but the main concern is what happens if the referral fails the President will have two options, either to cite the law or to sign the law despite his initial dissenting views," he continued. Mousiuttas, adding that if the law is cited, "we have been informed by the Legal Service that the citation is for the entire law, so this means that there will be no law, no reform until it is heard in court. That is what we are addressing, I hope and pray that by that time wiser thoughts will be had by all of us."
On behalf of the Movement of Ecologists, MP Alexandra Attalidou argued that the "selective sensitivity that the Government shows only for one municipality and that is not even an additional municipality as the Minister of Interior implied, undermines the effort that the Parliament has made to reach a consensus on local government. In fact he has mined a years-long effort without convincing us that the government's real concern is the proper implementation and sustainability of demos."
"We believe that the motives are different, we as Ecologists what we tried to do in consensus with all our colleagues is to move forward on the issue of local government because we believe that as European citizens Cypriots are entitled to have a local government, which will promote their wellbeing and their wellbeing touches on the protection of the environment and climate change, which we put in the bill," he said, adding that "the political parties took responsibility and there was a political cost for many of us to make some decisions. And now the government is coming in and trying to make the parliament look kind of irresponsible, the only one who is responsible is the government, and reopening the issue, an issue which the government itself linked to issues of EU funds."
"I know municipalities who, based on the letter sent by the President of the Republic and the arguments on which he relies that our opinion on the issue of the boundaries of the municipality of Peyia was unconstitutional, will go to court. The responsibility for anything that arises will be the responsibility of this Government, which I believe that with motives that it knows it wants to control what will happen in the area," he added on the matter.
"As Ecologists we look the citizens of Cyprus in the eye and we say to them that we have tried to make a local government which will give you explanations, which will be transparent, which will take responsibility towards you for your future and your children's future in terms of developments and environment and climate change," he said. "I call on the President of the Republic to withdraw the impeachment, not to refer it to the Supreme Court and that we have the greatest consensus in the coming months because right now our country, but also the region and the world have very big problems to face."
Source: CNA
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