TRUST the AKEL leadership to use the precarious situation of the economy as a pretext to promote its anachronistic socialist ideology. On Tuesday AKEL leader Andros Kyprianou presented the party’s proposals for the economy which read much more like a communist election manifesto that could be implemented over the next five to 10 years, rather than as a package for shoring up the economy now. Like the president who was its leader, the party does not have any sense of urgency.
This is why it came up with proposals about scaled contributions of high wage-earners, taxation of large pieces of un-utilised land, increase in the defence levy, computerisation of tax records, inspection of company business transactions, re-negotiation of the airport deals, quick issuing of title deeds, the administration of state land and many more. The list is very long and each measure would need several months to prepare, let alone be discussed and approved by the legislature.
Was the party being serious coming up with this package or was it just playing a communications game? We suspect the latter, as the main message of Kyprianou’s presentation was the need for ‘wealth to contribute’ to public finances. He also unveiled a new target for the party’s socialist rhetoric – accumulated wealth, which we “must find a way to get our hands on”. He acknowledged that many businesses had been losing money in the last three years, but they had big profits before the crisis, accumulating wealth which AKEL wants to tax.
It also wants to tax wealthy people who own real estate worth in excess of a total value that would be stipulated by the state. The party knows these measures would never be approved by the legislature, but it has proposed them so that it can boast subsequently that it had tried to tax wealth, but was thwarted by opposition parties that didn’t care about the workers. The same thinking was behind its anti-market proposals such as the imposition of maximum prices as a way of eliminating profiteering, and the freezing of rent increases in order to help small businesses.
As we said earlier, AKEL’s unenforceable proposals are an election manifesto aimed at accumulating political capital rather than a practical rescue package to help the country out of the crisis. That is why apart from its attack on ‘accumulated wealth’ it also talks about setting up a ‘social cohesion fund’ to help the poor. The money for this fund would come from taxing ‘accumulated wealth’. AKEL, intoxicated by its socialist populism, has forgotten that the most urgent issue is to reduce the budget deficit.
