‘THE PEOPLE-FRIENDLY’ government of Ethnarch Tassos that – according to Akelite folklore – was going to put an end to the neo-liberal, conservative policies of the extreme right-wing presidente Glafcos has made more enemies in its 20 months in office than the old sea-wolf had managed in his 10 years in power.
Yet this was the government that was going to put ‘people at the centre’ of all its policies, raising the living standards of the masses, giving financial assistance to the poor and improving state welfare while ignoring the dehumanising laws of the free market, which only served the interests of what the comrades routinely dismissed as ‘big capital’.
But 20 months into this caring, sharing government’s term all we see are drastic cuts in government spending, rising prices, falling living standards, the threat of job losses and wage cuts at state organisations, small businesses on the brink of closure while the taxman and banks are turning the screw on everyone.
So far, the ‘people-friendly’ government has clashed with potato farmers, vine growers, grain farmers, teachers, public servants, employees of semi-state organisations, municipalities, residents of mountain villages, cancer patients, hunters, members of NGOs, bar and nightclub owners, owners of private colleges and environmentalists, to mention only a few.
Strangely enough, the only group which has remained on good terms with the government is the one that AKEL had vowed to cut down to measure – big capital such as banks, developers, media barons, construction companies, car distributors, supermarket chains, drug importers.
The government may have lost its ‘people-friendly’ tag in its 20 months in power but at least it has gained another – ‘big capital-friendly’ – which, I suspect, the comrades are unlikely to make a big song and dance about, or use in their public declarations.
WE SHOULD not be too harsh on our Ethnarch because the fact is he inherited a big financial mess – empty state coffers, excessive state borrowing – from his predecessor, which membership of the EU obliges him to clear up. And the only way to clear it up is by drastically cutting government spending, a task that his finance minister has been performing with admirable, neo-liberal zeal.
The old sea wolf’s government had been spending cash with carefree abandon for too long – remember the 200 million bananas he squandered on the estragoshas.
Ironically, it was regularly accused by opposition parties like AKEL and DIKO of not spending enough and not being ‘people-friendly’. These parties, with DISY, changed the provisions of a tax reform package so as to reduce tax revenue and increase government spending, a sure-fire recipe for financial disaster.
And let’s not forget two of the decisions taken by the Ethnarch’s government immediately after his election. The government spent £60 million on increasing the range of some missiles we had and passed a child allowance law which cost close to £80 million. Child benefit will now be means-tested, because the government realised what a momentously stupid idea it was to subsidise every family with kids, no matter how wealthy it was.
This establishment, having always embraced neo-liberalism and the principles of the free market, would like to congratulate our Ethnarch for his commitment to spending cuts, his attacks on greedy trade unions and other parasitic groups which have been scrounging off the state for decades.
These are measures that win governments no friends or votes (another blessing in disguise), especially in a plantation in which the dominant view is that it is the state’s obligation to give money to any group of more than 50 people that stages a street demonstration lasting a minimum of 30 minutes and featuring on the evening news of at least of TV station.
LOADSAMONEY for everyone. This was how AKEL mouthpiece, Haravghi reported the government’s decision on January 27 of this year to give cash assistance to residents of mountain villages (altitude higher than 600m) for their heating bills. The heart-warming headline reads ‘Warm subsidy,’ while the sub-headline promises ‘Return of consumer tax to everyone next year’.
The paper (January 28, 2004) gloated that residents of mountain villages would receive an additional subsidy of between £200 and £400 over and above the £200 they would be receiving as a heating allowance to compensate for the steep rise in the price of heating oil. This had been agreed by the caring and generous commerce minister George Lillikas with community leaders from the mountain villages.
The good news was that Lillikas’ largesse would not end here. According to the report, the compassionate minister had revealed to the paper that “from this October or the winter period, the return TO ALL citizens, of the consumer tax paid on heating oil is being studied”.
In the end the wad of ten-pound notes featured in Haravghi’s front page will stay in the government’s pocket despite the ‘people-friendly’ minister’s sincere intention to help all of us. The winter period has arrived, but the noble idea of the government returning the full amount of consumer tax paid on heating oil to all citizens has been forgotten.
All that was given was a reduction of the consumer tax on heating oil from 14 to 11 cents per litre. Three cents subsidy per litre will save the average household about £100 over the winter. Had Haravghi had a sense of humour it would have reported this news with a picture of the same, headless gentleman giving a two finger salute to its readers.
Residents of mountain villages who last winter received about £400 in heating subsidy will now only receive a maximum of £150. Furious with the broken promises, they have threatened to come to town and occupy ministries until they receive more cash. Not a bad idea, as even if they do not get any more cash they will have saved something on their heating bills by staying in a ministry for a couple of nights. Admittedly they would have to bring the whole family if they are going to save something.
THE ETHNARCH’S feud with the secondary school teachers does not even seem to be money related. He declared on Monday that the government would crack down on teachers who gave afternoon private lessons because what they were doing was illegal.
This was not an impulsive statement like the offer, a week earlier, of Larnaca port to the Turkish Cypriots. There had been some reports in Phil, the semi-official mouthpiece, for a few weeks suggesting that the education ministry was preparing a crackdown on moonlighting teachers but nobody took them seriously. There had been countless such promises by the ministry in the past but were never enforced.
But it seems that Tassos meant business, which was good news for the paid agents of the Americans and other Nenekides as they would no longer be the main target of Ethnarchis airport rage. Now he had the teachers to pillory in public, at least for the next few weeks.
Speaking at the airport on Friday, on his return from Rome, the paid agents did not get a mention as our wise leader announced that there would be “no tolerance whatsoever” of teachers who gave lessons “on the side”. He also said that the “matter will not be forgotten” in a few weeks as had happened in the past. Unless he gets bored of the teachers and a more appealing target emerged for his airport rage.
THE CRACKDOWN is no bad thing, but to be effective it requires teachers snitching on their colleagues or students, who hate doing private lessons, reporting their parents and the teacher.
It is the perfect opportunity for kids fed up of wasting every single afternoon doing lessons and having no time to play to get their revenge on their parents and teachers. All they have to do is call the cops and tell them the time and venue of their lesson.
The crackdown will not end private tuition by state teachers, it will make it go underground. When the Clerides government made a half-baked attempt to clamp down, arresting a couple of teachers in the process, the teachers simply changed venue every day, informing parents at the last minute.
There are other ways of avoiding the short arm of the law. They could employ someone to stand guard at their door keeping watch for the approach of cop cars, or they could build crypts in which the kids could hide when cops arrived. The clampdown is doomed to failure because the demand for private lessons is very high.
It is the plantation herd mentality in all its glory. Parents feel that if they don’t send their kids to private lessons they would be accused of not loving them.
WHILE you cannot criticise the Ethnarchic initiative against greedy, self-serving teachers it has to be said that the clampdown is misguided. If they want to stop private lessons they should improve the standard of education at schools by forcing teachers to work hard in the mornings. The low standards suits the teachers as they create demand for private lessons.
And there are many teachers earning huge amounts of dosh from private tuition, which has become a £30 million industry. A press report about a married couple, both teachers, earning 17 grand a month from their afternoon lessons was no exaggeration according to people in the know. Another teaching couple our establishment knows has built a one-million pound house. You just can’t build such a house on two teachers’ salaries.
We would like to make a constructive and ‘people friendly’ suggestion to our cash-strapped government. It should abandon the idea of police raids and unleash its tax inspectors on the moonlighting teachers, none of whom declare their afternoon incomes; they must each owe tens of thousands of pounds in income tax.
This could be an untapped source of revenue for our cash-strapped state and give companies a much-needed rest from the unrelenting attentions of nasty tax collectors who have become the plantation’s most hated officials. Turn them loose on the teachers, I say.
THE PRESIDENTIAL Broadcasting Corporation is also feeling the pinch of the government’s austerity budget. The finance minister has cut the CyBC’s budget by 4 million bananas for 2005, which means that wishes of a prosperous new year to the corporation’s staff will have hollow ring.
This year the corporation has already run out of cash and is claiming that it will have no money to pay staff at the end of this month. If it does scrape the cash together for this month it will still not have enough to pay the 13th salaries. Not surprising really, considering that the average salary at the CyBC, including cleaners and messengers, is £30,000 per annum!
So this week we had CyBC news shows giving us heart-rending stories about the possibility that its employees will not be paid at the end of November. “How will we pay our electricity bills and meet our other financial obligations?” asked an angst-ridden reporter of a politician he was interviewing about the issue.
Is this news? Does a viewer who earns a tenth of the average CyBC salary really care about the pampered corporation’s workers, who have elevated the prompt payment of their wages to an issue of great national importance? They will receive their huge salaries at some point, perhaps with a few days delay, so why are they crying about it on air and demanding our sympathy, like pathetically spoilt school-kids?
Perhaps the corporation’s weeping employees, who have become experienced charity fund-raisers, could utilise these skills for their own benefit. A two-day Radiomarathon to raise cash for the November salaries of CyBC staff might not be such a bad idea.
