The Anastasiades–DISY government’s second five year term of office is turning into a big disaster for our country. In three years, so many problems and so many failures have accumulated, which without any exaggeration are putting the Republic of Cyprus’ future in question.
The attacks against Cypriot citizens and our homeland are ongoing and haven’t stopped. Bearing this in mind, the forthcoming parliamentary elections are assuming a real historical significance. Citizens have the best opportunity to open the door to the government ruling forces to go and to create the hope for the real change our country needs.
During these three years, the Anastasiades-DISY government:
• Bears enormous responsibilities for all the talk about a two state solution in Cyprus. The numerous testimonies that Nikos Anastasiades was openly discussing this possibility and the DISY leadership’s “new realism” are creating very serious dangers for the future of the Republic of Cyprus and the Cypriot people.
• The government ruling forces are responsible for the fact that corruption has reached unprecedented levels in our country. The government ruling circles claim that corruption has existed for a long time and that people from different political spectrums and groups have always been implicated. But what they are trying to hide is that this time corruption is coming from the very top of the state. Cyprus has fallen far behind in international corruption indexes and has been discredited internationally. The inconceivable scandal of the “golden” passports scheme, in which the Council of Ministers of the Anastasiades – DISY government took all the decisions and approved each passport separately, constitutes the very pinnacle of these scandals. The unprecedented conflict of interest with the law firms of the President, Ministers and leading officials of the ruling DISY party, submitting citizenship applications and approving them themselves, goes beyond any limit.
• It created the great scandal of the sell-off of the Cyprus Cooperative Bank, where the government ruling forces in an organized and targeted way transferred billions of Euros worth of social property to a private bank and on top of that it burdened the Cypriot people with several billions of Euros. We are still waiting to hear the ruling party’s views on the Committee of Inquiry’s condemnation of the government.
• The government ruling forces are gradually imposing institutional racism as we saw it expressed in the case of the serial killer. Authoritarianism and human rights abuses by the government express the regime philosophy of the government ruling forces.
• The democratic functioning of the state is being undermined by the government ruling force’s constant confrontations with independent institutions. The Anastasiades-DISY philosophy is that those independent institutions that don’t agree with them, must be crushed.
• They have failed to handle the pandemic, burdening the working people and small and medium-sized enterprises with unbearable costs, which are already creating enormous socio-economic problems.
• Our country’s education is suffering from the sloppiness and absence of any planning on the part of the given Education Ministers that have passed. The problem isn’t Kenevezos, Kadis, Hambiaouris or the current Minister Prodromou – the problem is the government ruling force’s neo-liberal aversion to the public school system.
• The Public health system is also being targeted with the organized undermining of public hospitals.
The country needs change. In May we open the door for the government to go. The biggest guarantee for change is the election ballot of AKEL – Left – New Forces because we have never – neither directly, nor indirectly – supported the government ruling forces and their philosophy. We have never shirked our responsibilities, nor did we hide while the government of the country was being determined. The country cannot withstand any experimentations with newly emerging populists. Now is the time. Every vote cast for AKEL – Left – New Forces is a step towards realising change.

Let’s open the door for the government to go…
Article by Christos Christofides, AKEL Political Bureau member
14th February 2021, ‘HARAVGI’ newspaper