PRESIDENT Glafcos Clerides was last night believed to have finally ratified the state budget, CyBC radio reported, ending a weeklong row with Parliament, which came close to leaving the government with no cash.
Clerides last week refused to ratify the budget in protest at Parliament’s decision to reduce the salary of cabinet secretary Chrysostomos Sofianos, who was supposed to resign three years ago.
The President tabled a proposal before Parliament asking it to revise the contentious amendment to the budget.
But the House stuck to its guns yesterday, voting down Clerides’ proposal in its plenary session. Opposition parties AKEL, DIKO and KISOS opposed the bill with 27 votes, while ruling DISY voted in favour of it with 15 votes. One-seat parties the Greens and New Horizons abstained from voting.
But according to CyBC, the President backed down on his demands last night and signed the budget, which it said would published in the official gazette coming out today. If the budget had not been ratified within the next two days, public works would be suspended and civil servants would stop receiving their salaries.
The contentious provision of the budget provides that the Cabinet’s secretary, Chrysostomos Sofianos will stop receiving his monthly salary in full as he is past retiring age and get a reduced pension when he stops working.
Sofianos had been due to retire in 1999, but the Council of Ministers extended his term of office until February 2003.
But the House gave an alternative to Sofianos, adopting a compromise proposal tabled by DIKO yesterday.
The proposal provides that Sofianos can continue to work until the end of March and then start receiving his monthly pension in full. If he chooses to work until the end of his term of office, then he shall receive a smaller pension.
However, Sofianos has rejected the offer.
Opposition parties yesterday were critical of the President for freezing the budget for the sake of an employee. Some deputies accused Clerides of serving personal interests.
DISY leader Nicos Anastassiades shared the views of the other parties but asked them to avoid personalising the debate.
“If the opposition’s stance concerned all pensioners who work in the public sector we would probably side with you,” he said.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
