House approves new committees despite Michaelides protest

EVERYTHING looks set for the newly elected Parliament to get down to work, with the second plenum of the new House yesterday approving a proposal on the composition and chairmanships of 17 House Committees.

The proposal, tabled by the four main parties who struck a deal last Monday on how to share out the 17 chairmanships, would have passed by consensus if the leader of ADIK, Dinos Michaelides, had not abstained from the vote.

Michaelides complained about AKEL, DISY, DIKO and KISOS sharing out the chairmanships of the Parliamentary committees between themselves. ADIK, New Horizons, the Greens, and the United Democrats – with one deputy each – are allowed to participate in up to three committees each, but did not get any chairmanships.

“According to the Constitution, KISOS is not eligible to get any chairmanships because it has fewer than six deputies. If you are making an exception for KISOS why not make an exception for the smaller parties too?” Michaelides asked.

Panayiotis Demetriou of DISY played down the claim of his protesting colleague, insisting that: “We are doing everything by the book.”

The main committees are: Interior, Finance, Legal Affairs, European Affairs and Defence and have between nine and 15 members each.

AKEL and DISY, with 20 and 19 seats respectively, got six committee chairmanships each (same as before), DIKO, with nine seats got four, compared to three in the last House, and KISOS with four seats maintained only one of its two previous chairmanships.

AKEL will get the chairmanships of the Interior, Labour, Refugee, Agriculture, Environment and Institutions and Values committees.

DISY will chair the Education, Foreign Affairs, Legal Affairs, Commerce, Health and Watchdog Committees.

DIKO will get European Affairs, Finance, Communications and Human Rights.

KISOS will only get the Defence Committee chairmanship.

A decision on the formation and chairmanships of ad hoc committees (such as on Crime and on the Cyprus File) is to be made within the next two weeks.

Committees will convene whenever there are issues to address, but they are not due to start holding regular meetings before September, despite the fact that Chief EU negotiator George Vassiliou has repeatedly sounded the alarm about the need for the House to work through the summer if it is to catch up the backlog of EU harmonisation laws.

Who got what

Finance Marcos Kyprianou (DIKO)

Institutions and Values Andreas Christou (AKEL)

Foreign Affairs Nicos Anastassiades (DISY)

European Affairs Tassos Papadopoulos (DIKO)

Communications Nicos Pittokopitis (DIKO)

Environment George Lillikas (AKEL)

Education Prodromos Prodromou (DISY)

Refugee Aristophanis Georgiou (AKEL)

Interior Nicos Katsourides (AKEL)

Commerce Lefteris Christoforou (DISY)

Labour Andros Kyprianou (AKEL)

Defence Yiannakis Omirou (KISOS)

Agriculture Christos Mavrokordatos (AKEL)

Legal Affairs Panayiotis Demetriou (DISY)

Health Antonis Karas (DISY)

Watchdog Christos Pourgourides (DISY)

Human Rights Aristos Chrysostomou (DIKO)

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