Clerides goes back to the House on refugee title deeds

By Bouli Hadjioannou

PRESIDENT Clerides yesterday asked the House of Representatives to reconsider a packet of laws aiming to stop the government from issuing title deeds to refugees.

His request will go before an emergency meeting of the House Refugee Committee on Monday. Unless parties have a change of heart, the fight will probably then move on to the Supreme Court.

The six laws, pushed through the House by all political parties except Disy on November 13, were the culmination of a dogged dispute between Clerides and the parties over the wisdom of giving refugees title deeds for property.

Opposition parties and Diko – even though at the time it still had five ministers in the Clerides government – had argued that the move sent the wrong political messages and risked being interpreted as a sign the Greek Cypriot side was willing to agree to an exchange of property.

When political arguments failed to convince, they voted through legislation to tie governments’ hands.

The president’s response was to send the laws back for reconsideration on the following grounds: that they tended to create unfair discrimination between refugees who have already been issued title deeds and those who have not; that they tended to seek to block implementation of part of Clerides’ pre- election programme, which, by his election to the presidency, enjoyed the support of the people; that implementation of the pre-election programme had started nearly five years ago and that a delayed effort to block the “final result was not considered politically correct”;that the laws create unfair discrimination between refugees and other citizens of the republic; efforts to put restrictions on government spending during the financial year made it impossible for the government to exercise proper economic policy.

The House Refugee Committee will discuss the issue on Monday amid signs that it will stick to its guns. Committee chairman Aristophanes Georghiou of Akel told reporters yesterday he did not think the arguments cited by the president would lead to a change of opinion.

If deputies vote down the President’s request, Clerides will have the choice either to abide by their decision or to challenge it in the Supreme Court.

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.