The profoundly anti-social government policies have accumulated many problems in many sectors of the Cyprus economy and society. The authoritarianism and arrogance with which the government and ruling forces are governing make the situation even worse and are provoking reactions.
What is the situation that has been created in Cypriot society as a result of the policies imposed by the Anastasiades-DISY government? We have poverty. 234,000 of our fellow citizens are on the poverty line. There is unemployment. We have deregulation of labour relations as these have developed after decades of working people’s struggles. A sellout of public wealth and assets, foreclosures and many other negative developments are u8nderway. As a result, these extremely anti-social policies are quite naturally provoking intense social upheaval and reactions.
I want to recall that it is not the first time that such strong resistances and reactions have been caused against the government of the Democratic Rally party. The same reactions and upheaval throughout society occurred when they were in power in the previous decade.
Their philosophy unfortunately does not enable them to understand the real causes of problems; the real reasons provoking this social upheaval and reaction. They aren’t able to change their policy approaches. Instead, using their usual ideological allies, they are trying to shift the burden on others.
What is the recipe they are following in their attempt to shirk whatever responsibilities and load them on the shoulders of others?
* First and foremost it is the denigration and demeaning of working people and the attempts to divide them.
* It is also the method of scaremongering and the attempt at frightening working people in order to undermine working people’s reactions and assertions.
* And of course the third parameter of their method is to put the blame on the usual suspect. And the usual suspect is – as a rule – AKEL which is responsible for everything that is taking place in Cypriot society.
Allow me to talk about each method separately.
The attempt to denigrate working people
As far as the attempt to denigrate and demean workers is concerned, they talk about privileged workers who are demanding more rights. It’s not only the employees of semi-governmental organizations who are fighting for more rights. It’s also hotel workers and no one can call them privileged workers. Workers on busses and employees in stores are also asserting their demands with regards working time. Contract teachers who teach evening classes at public schools and who have seen all their rights abolished and their salaries cut to 300-400 euros, are also asserting their demands. Are these working people privileged? Bus drivers on 800 Euros, contract teachers on 300- 400 Euros, shop workers in stores who wanted to have their Sunday free of work and hotel employees – are they all privileged?
They want to turn workers into obedient servants
The other thing they are trying to persuade society is that working people are not entitled to have an opinion about what will happen, for example, on the issue of privatizations. They must work and be converted at the same time into obedient servants. The only people who are entitled to have an opinion are today’s government and ruling forces and I repeat their ideological allies, those who agree with them, that is to say the employers. Those who disagree are not entitled to have an opinion.
For the government and ruling forces pre-election tricks are a correct policy approach, while workers demanding their rights are perceived as irresponsible
The third method is to argue “look at those irresponsible people, we managed to get out of the economic crisis (they refer to a “success story”) and as soon as we have moved on from the economic crisis they have begun to assert”. Of course when they announce pre-election tricks, such as the formation of a professional army costing € 50 million, this isn’t considered as populism. They aren’t considered as being irresponsible for dishing about € 50 million.
At the same time, we are being told that the Cyprus problem will be solved by the end of the year and in November 3,000 professional soldiers will be recruited, spending all those millions. That’s seen as a correct policy, but when the bus drivers are claiming € 47,000 so that a part of the cuts in their money is returned to them then that is considered an irresponsible approach.
When they make announcements about imminent pay increases in the public sector just two months before the May parliamentary election, this is considered as a correct policy approach, but when some other workers are asserting rights this is seen as irresponsible.
When huge increases are granted to highly-paid officials in private companies and more specifically I am referring to the private sector, privately run but unfortunately this is the sector that has destroyed the country’s economy, we did not hear them with the same passion reacting and saying, “What are you doing? You highly paid people are increasing your wages even more?” One of you can take home what one hundred bus workers get” and of course they denigrate them by telling them that they are being instigated: “You aren’t reacting to these policies but certain circles are telling you how to react.”
Scaremongering – frightening the people
The government must change its anti-social policies to promote social cohesion
They immediately forgot the “success story”. They say “don’t struggle for a few thousand euros because the Cyprus economy will collapse and you will bring us back to where we were before” – this for a few thousand euros. The only logical explanation I can give is that they know that there are very serious problems in the Cyprus economy. They know that there is absolutely no “success story” and they are trying to find an excuse apportioning possible responsibilities that will be emerge as developments evolve on others and of course on the usual suspect, which as I said before, is AKEL.
AKEL is being accused as being responsible for the mobilizations in the ports.
AKEL is responsible for the mobilizations in the hospitals.
AKEL is responsible for what is happening in Cyprus.
Do you know what their misfortune is? It is that, unfortunately for the working people, we are a minority in the Semi-governmental organizations and the public sector. This is so because for decades they sought to exclude us because they considered that anyone who supported AKEL or those who spoke well of AKEL are second class citizens. They sought to use various mechanisms to limit the possibility of Left people finding a job in the public and semi-public sector.
Decisions in support of mobilizations in these organizations are taken by a majority vote.
Do they want to say that AKEL is able to manipulate the followers of DISY and DIKO, possibly even leading members of DISY and DIKO and possibly other parties too? I think that such arguments cannot stand up to logic.
I therefore reiterate that the Government must understand what the real reasons for all of these social reactions are and change its policies in order to promote social cohesion and address the problems that exist. It the government’s sole responsibility to abandon the authoritarianism and arrogance with which it addresses these issues; abandon its intensely anti-social policies and pre-election tricks and see how to solve the real problems that exist in Cypriot society.
I want to address the following to DISY President Mr. Neophytou. This recipe of frightening the people has been tried even before 2013. We will react. We will state our different view and you must understand that that is what democracy means. We have the same right that he has to formulate our own policy positions and we will project them no matter how much the political positions we express disturb him.
