The Plenary of the Parliament unanimously passed the second supplementary budget for 2022, in which the total amount of additional appropriations required is €171.8 million, approximately. At the same time, there was tension over the issue of the designation of assistants to independent officials and the budget for the George Grivas Digenis Foundation
These additional expenditures concern the extension of the implementation of a series of anti-coronavirus measures in the first months of 2022 and extraordinary expenditures as a consequence of the war in Ukraine. They also cover additional needs for strengthening defence armouring, fire prevention, social benefits, health benefits, sports and other requests. The need also arose to amend Article 16 of the Budget Law as well as the creation/abolition/renaming of posts.
The most important expenditures mentioned in the supplementary budget concern: Special Independent Services €6.4 million, Defence Armour €52.8 million, Water Purchase €36 million and OEDA €2 million, Pensioners' Allowance for Pensioners with Service during the Turkish Invasion €2.6 million and Social Pension €2.98 million.
The Plenary Assembly orally adopted an AKEL amendment with 29 votes in favour and 18 votes against to cross an appropriation concerning the Georgios Grivas Digenis Foundation.
The plenary marginally rejected an amendment by DIKO to delete the references to Assistant Attorney General of the Republic, Assistant Auditor General and Assistant Accountant General, given that a decision of the Supreme Court is pending on the issue of renaming the above posts of officials. There were 23 votes in favour, 24 against and one abstention. 21 MPs voted in favour and 28 against.
AKEL's amendment to block the €5,800,000 allocation for the purpose of granting credits for the repayment of the dockworkers' loan against the reduction of charges at Limassol Port was also approved. 31 Members voted in favour and 18 against.
Absence of funds and livestock farmers and leisure centres
AKEL MP Andreas Kavkalias said that in the supplementary budget there are not those funds that should be available so that the state can support the real economy and society and professional groups that have been hit hard by the crisis, such as leisure centres, professionals in the field of culture.
ELAM MP Sotiris Ioannou said that the additional 3 million promised by the government to cattle breeders are missing, while the funds for unaccompanied minors, who, he said, are neither unaccompanied nor minors, are being increased. He expressed satisfaction that the line for the George Grivas Digenis Foundation was included in the supplementary budget.
EPP MP Elias Mirianthous said they were expecting an additional amount to support the primary sector for both farming and fishing. Regarding the 36 million euros for the purchase of water, he said it was the cost that the government was required to pay to desalination companies due to the increase in energy prices and wondered why the Water Department did not arrange for these companies to buy energy from renewable energy sources and not from the AEK.
DPA-Cooperation MP Alekos Tryfonides expressed disappointment at the lack of support for groups that the government ought to support. On leisure centres in particular, he said no reasonable explanation has yet been given by the Finance Minister as to why they are not being compensated. He said the same for cultural people. She also asked for compensation for the natural disaster suffered by fishermen in the port of Kato Pyrgos.
DIKO MP Christiana Erotokritou welcomed the fact that about half of the budget is for defence expenditure. At the same time, she said that classes of the population and businesses such as leisure centres, despite promises made during the pandemic, are still expecting to receive about €1 million and the Finance Ministry is "whistling indifferently". She also said they would vote in favour of AKEL's second amendment.
Controversy over assistants to independent officials
Regarding the DIKO amendment on assistants to the independent institutions of Attorney General, Auditor General, Ms. Erotokritou said that while a dispute is pending before the Supreme Court, on which it is called upon to decide, any change from what is currently in force is not correct.
DISY MP Harris Georgiades expressed satisfaction because the largest budget by far concerns defence armouring. Regarding the DIKO amendment on the name of the Assistants of independent officials, he said that he accepted the opinion of the then Attorney General in 2014 Costas Clerides on the Assistant Attorney General. Today as he said that there is a new opinion from the current Attorney General should be respected today as well. He added that there is no case pending before the Court on the merits.
Hellenic Parliamentary Party President Marinos Sizopoulos, in turn, welcomed the fact that 30 per cent of the supplementary budget concerns equipment programmes of the AF, noting that in recent years serious steps have been taken to upgrade the equipment and operational capacity of the AF. Responding to Mr Georgiades, he said that there are opinions of the Attorney General on illegalities and irregularities that have not been implemented and enforced. Tryfonides said that we have to implement the opinion of the Attorney General on the matter.
AKEL MP Irene Charalambidou asked Mr Georgiades not to be selective as to which prosecutor's opinion he adopts. The Anastasiades government, she said, "taught me to question the opinion of the Attorney General, especially if he is a former minister of the Anastasiades government". He said that in 2015 DISY was questioning and undermining Kostas Clerides and they told the courts to decide.
Georgiades said that Ms. Charalambidou is "unlearned" and that despite the opinion he had as a government minister, he immediately obligingly adopted the opinion and implemented it by amending the state budget.
Limassol MP Andreas Themistocleous said that there was no need to undermine Costas Clerides because "he was undermining himself". In no country in the world, he said, an Attorney General did not think of requesting the waiver of immunity of an MP for an offence paid with a fine and even for a traffic violation.
He also said that in the 2015 budgets for the first time the difference between the Attorney General and the Assistant Attorney General was attempted for the first time. Is there anyone, he questioned, who understands the word Assistant Attorney General as "butler-type assistant" who lacks powers. He spoke of attitudes reminiscent of "small kingdoms."
EDEK MP Kostis Efstathiou said that the opinion of the Attorney General has the value of legal advice and nothing beyond that. One cannot adopt or reject the opinions of the Attorney General. He added that the constitution refers to an Assistant Attorney General and not an Assistant Attorney General.
DIKO MP Chrysis Pantelides urged the body to vote in favour of the DIKO amendment so that there is no constitutional aberration.
AKEL MP Giorgos Loukaidis said that the matter should be taken up by the court and that it is the worst thing for the Parliament to intervene with a supplementary budget.
AKEL amendment for a fund for the Grivas Digenis Foundation
Loukaides also asked for an oral amendment to freeze the budget of around 43,000 euros for the EOKA museum and the Grivas Digenis monument, stating that the government attempted to mislead by avoiding references in the budget text to the George Grivas Digenis Foundation, whom he described as "a destroyer and destroyer of Cyprus".
DISY MP Nikos Tornaritis said that no amendment could be tabled once the debate on the issue had begun. He also criticised the characterisations of a bully and destroyer of Cyprus, stating that AKEL's Goebbels propaganda must stop at some point.
Mr. Loukaides said that the impertinence has gone beyond any limit by attributing to them gembellism and countered that history has recorded the facts.
DIKO President Nicolas Papadopoulos agreed with the request for an oral amendment although he said it was a paradoxical procedure. However, he also referred to the oddity of the executive changing the wording of an article that had already been rejected by Parliament and there was no parliamentary scrutiny.
ELAM President Christos Christou said that Mr Loukaides thinks he is speaking at the EDON camp and not in Parliament. We, he added, fully respect the EOKA 55-59 era of which Georgios Grivas Digenis was the leader. This body, he said, decided to declare Digenis a worthy son of the homeland.
Speaker of the Parliament Zacharias Koulias said that the struggle of EOKA liberated Cyprus, we are grateful to these people, however he said that the later course of Digenis led to the destruction of Cyprus.
Pantelidis said that the struggle of EOKA is so legendary and important that the government should not belittle it with "descriptive alchemies" in a supplementary budget text and should have the courage and boldness to ask for what it wants.
Ecologue MP Alexandra Attalidou said that the afters honour the firsts and not the firsts the afters. The after, she said, is a divided country. Some, she added, were lost because others had too big ideas for their own nationalism.
Themistocleous said that AKEL had fought Digenis with the same fury from its first steps in the EOKA struggle, that Grivas died six months before the coup and that the contribution of both leaders of the EOKA struggle should be recognised.
Source: CNA
Contents of this article including associated images are belongs Cyprus Times
Views & opinions expressed are those of the author and/or Cyprus Times
Source
