MORE than a hundred university and college students protested outside the Presidential Palace yesterday morning, calling on the government to respect a unanimous parliamentary decision to subsidise all students.
“Sponsor us, not the stockbrokers,” students chanted, demonstrating in the rain for more than an hour.
Students’ Union POFNE and other student organisations submitted a memorandum to a Presidential Palace’s representative, warning they would step up their action if President Glafcos Clerides did not stop challenging the House decision.
College students and those who are on a Foundation, a Master’s or a prior admission language course are not entitled to state subsidises, while university students receive £1,500 each a year.
Less than a month ago, the House Plenum approved a bill, granting those students £700 a year.
But the President appealed last week to the Supreme Court to challenge the decision, pledging it was not in line with the Constitution.
Students argued the President’s move would split the student body in two.
“The matter is not constitutional, it is political, and it should be addressed as such. We have submitted a memorandum to the Presidential Palace’s representative Nicos Panayiotou, calling on the President to table a new proposal before the House, providing for all students to receive a state subsidise. We are offering him this chance to sort out the problem once and for all. But if he doesn’t, we will take further action,” POFNE President Chrysis Pantelides told reporters.
Christina Christofia, a law student at a university in Athens, told the Cyprus Mail: “The President has stabbed us in the back and he is being disrespectful to the legislature. Even students who have to take extra years to finish their course because of health problems are not eligible to a state subsidy.”
College students are planning to rally outside the Presidential Palace tomorrow.
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.
