THE DECISION of the majority of the legislature to vote against the government’s bill increasing corporate and real estate tax was a clear rejection of its one-sided approach to reducing the budget deficit. No amount of class struggle rhetoric by the government and AKEL, about making the rich pay for the recession could hide the one-sidedness of the measures that would have caused much more harm than good to the economy.
In effect, the government would be taking money out of the economy at a time of recession so that it would not have to deal with the main cause of the deficit – the huge public sector pay-roll and pensions. The workers should not be burdened with the cost of the recession was the official propaganda, which sought to justify not touching the labour aristocracy of the public sector by lumping it together with much worse off workers of the private sector.
As a result of the recession, unemployment is at a record high and is set to increase as more businesses cut jobs or close down. The workers on the dole are all from the private sector and their number would increase if the government insists on reducing its deficit through increased taxes. Meanwhile, PASYDY, the union of the public servants, added salt to the wound last week when it boasted that its members made a big sacrifice in agreeing zero pay rises for two years. Yet they would still receive in excess of 4 per cent annual pay rises thanks to the CoLA wage index and higher pay scales. Private sector workers, in contrast, would have been lucky not to have had their pay cut in order to keep their jobs.
Is this the kind of fairer society President Christofias has pledged to build? He has pulled out all the stops to protect the interests of the privileged while turning the screw on the less fortunate workers. And this has been packaged as a defence of the have-nots! Not surprisingly, the two measures rejected by the legislature on Thursday were agreed at a meeting between Christofias and the PASYDY boss and all the money-saving suggestions discussed by the finance minister and the political parties were completely ignored.
What could we conclude from this? Christofias’ only concern is to protect the labour aristocracy of the public service. Someone should inform the president that public servants are not the only stakeholders in society. If he wants to reduce the budget deficit he should come up with measures that have the support of all the stakeholders and not just of a small, but privileged minority.
