A PACKED House of Representatives managed to vote on 64 of the 90 bills on the agenda of one of the longest Plenum sessions ever in the first three and a half hours of its meeting yesterday.
One of the most important bills to gain House approval during the morning session of the Plenum allows investors to buy shares on credit.
The House dissolved yesterday after voting on 90 bills in a marathon session, which started at 9.30am and finished at around midnight with a three-hour break in the afternoon.
The House ended its five-year term in office ahead of the May 27 Parliamentary elections.
Many bills were summarily passed unanimously without deputies even having to raise their hands to vote.
Acting House President Nicos Anastassiades of DISY rushed through dozens of bills following an unusual but practical procedure: he read aloud the main provisions of the bill, asked whether anyone had any objection, and without pausing declared the bill passed. With Anastassiades’ voting system, many bills took less than a minute each to pass. And reporters, who lost count of how many bills had passed, made a lot of noise as they kept asking each other about which bills had passed and which had not.
One deputy was overheard saying: “Anastassiades’ method is unique. He is really talented.”
The Plenum’s morning session approved a proposal allowing jet skis to operate without interruption from 10am to 7pm, changing a law forbidding the operation of the pleasure craft between 1 and 4 pm.
Deputies also approved a bill reverting a recent vote that stipulated that investors had to put money down before purchasing shares.
According to the new law, which will be implemented on July 12, investors can buy shares on credit.
Another bill that deputies passed unanimously provided that the Securities and Exchange Commission would be authorised to penalise brokerages, financial advisors and investment organisations found to have breached Stock Exchange regulations.
The Commission will also have the right to request information from any party in suspect transactions.
The morning session passed a bill providing for the admission of all children with special needs into normal schools by the next academic year in September.
The bill also calls for the speedy detection of mentally and physically disabled children as well as their special training.
Another unanimously passed bill forbids the publication of election poll results in the last seven days before the elections.
The House also passed many harmonisation bills to bring Cyprus into line with EU standards.
Yesterday’s morning session was an intense and exhausting one: Deputies as well as reporters kept walking in and out of the Plenum’s amphitheatre. At some point, a group of deputies returned to the meeting after a coffee break, just on time to vote on a bill and had to raise their hands to vote as they were walking to their seats.
At another point, Anastassiades told off a deputy who had stretched his arms: “You are not allowed to do that while in the Plenum,” he said.
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.
