By Bouli Hadjioannou
OPPOSITION parties – adding substance to their verbal protests – yesterday tabled a packet of bills in the House of Representatives to block government moves to issue title deeds to refugees.
The six bills – submitted by Akel, Diko, Edek and the United Democrats – came as the House wound up its protracted debate on the issue.
Edek’s Demetris Eliades told the plenary that through the bills the four parties wanted to show their “political reaction to a government policy they consider negative for the cause of the refugees and dangerous for the future of the Cyprus problem.”
Eliades’ brief statement came only minutes after Disy deputy Stelios Stylianou – the last speaker in the debate over the past three weeks – joined the chorus of protests against the government’s move.
He told the plenary that issuing title deeds to refugees for houses built on Turkish Cypriot land belonging either to individuals or to the Turkish Cypriot religious foundation Efkaf would send the wrong message.
He said such action could be interpreted abroad as an exchange of property with Turkish Cypriots for property in the Turkish-occupied north.
“The issue is not legal, but clearly political… we cannot take someone’s property and then protest because someone has taken ours,” he said.
He urged the government to look for other ways to help refugees’ credit worthiness.
Akel’s Kikis Yiangou said the move opened the way to Turkish Cypriot leader Rauf Denktash to give title deeds for Greek Cypriot land in the occupied north. Yiangou said he feared President Clerides had agreed on a population exchange with Denktash at Montreux and was hiding it from the public.
The government has hotly defended its decision to issue title deeds and refused to reconsider or suspend the process. It has also underlined that the title deeds was a long time pre-election pledge of the president.
Interior Minister Dinos Michaelides, who is Diko vice president, has come out openly in support of the move despite his party’s strong opposition.
Yesterday’s packet of measures aims to place legal and financial obstacles in the government’s way.
The explanatory report accompanying all six notes that the bills aim to “obstruct the mass transfer of state, common, expropriated Greek or Turkish Cypriot property to refugees who now hold immovable property under housing schemes for the displaced.”
They include proposals to prohibit the compulsory purchase of land if the ultimate aim is to issue title deeds to refugees and to prevent the government from using funds saved from other budget provisions to cover the cost – direct or indirect of issuing title deeds.
