THE LAWS granting the children of mother refugees the same rights and status as those of father’s were blatantly unconstitutional and parliamentarians who passed them were well aware of that, ruling party AKEL’s Stavros Evagorou said yesterday.
Evagorou said the parties backing the two laws that were overturned on Tuesday by a Supreme Court ruling were obviously aiming to serve petty political interests.
“During the discussion at parliament, AKEL had warned that the House of Representatives could not knowingly pass laws that were blatantly unconstitutional, nor could we violate the principle of separation of powers, intervening as a legislature in the formation of the state’s budget when the sole responsibility for this lies with the executive power,” said Evagorou.
He added that the Supreme Court had sent a resounding message to “those political parties that serve petty political expediencies and promote populism over authority, passing laws that are blatantly unconstitutional”.
With their behaviour, said Evagorou, the parties – DISY, DIKO and EDEK – forced President Demetris Christofias to turn to the Supreme Court, in his duty to protect the Constitution.
The two law proposals were initially passed by the House Plenum on June 3 last year and were referred back to parliament by the President. But Christofias’ referral was rejected by majority vote on June 17, automatically sending the matter to the Supreme Court.
The first law attempted to alter current legislation that offers housing aid to refugees, by adding the children of women refugees as beneficiaries. The second proposal provided a change in the Population Register, again by adding the children of female refugees under the category of “displaced”.
“Regarding the fair demand of the offspring of mother refugees to be recognised as refugees with all the rights supplied by the relevant law, AKEL feels this can be promoted and resolved in a specific manner, through a discussion between the political powers and government, with specific conclusions,” said Evagorou.
DISY’s refugee commissioner and MP Soteris Sampson yesterday said his party had examined the supreme court ruling in depth and respected it.
But he added that it didn’t touch on the essence of the matter, which was recognising the rights of children born to women refugees.
“DISY remains committed to the need of recognising the inequality between refugee children,” said Sampson, adding that the government’s request for parliament to release €1.6 million for political refugees could have been used for the children of mother refugees.
DIKO’s Andreas Angelides said the court may have taken into account the provision in the Constitution that prohibits parliament from increasing the state’s expenditures, but it failed to take into consideration another provision of the Constitution, which calls for equal treatment of all citizens, which parliament and the government and the courts should stand up for. “We will try to lift this inequality,” said Angelides.
EDEK’s George Varnava called on the government to be straight and announce if it ever intends to recognise the rights of these members of public.
