“Preparing such a ‘holistic’ bill (regarding multiple pensions) with all its complexities and obvious constitutional issues could take a year or more to draft. And another year-plus to be debated in Parliament. In other words, don’t hold your breath…”.
That’s what this column wrote on October 16, 2023! Back then, some might have thought our comments were over-dramatic.
Today’s date is January 21, 2025! The bill hasn’t even been submitted to Parliament yet.
Today, our newspaper reveals that it has been prepared and is undergoing legal review. Once the Law Office finishes, it will go to the Cabinet for approval before being sent to Parliament for debate.
Care to wager whether it will be passed before the next parliamentary elections in May 2026?
This column apologises for irritating you yet again, potentially to a degree harmful to your health. However, the level of mockery is staggering.
While the time-wasting in preparing and passing legislation to curb this long-standing abuse is infuriating, the content of the government’s proposed solution is beyond the pale.
The reason is simple: as Finance Minister Makis Keravnos brazenly admits to our newspaper, the new bill relies on the supposedly Einstein-level brilliant solution of replacing multiple pensions with generous lump-sum payments for retiring state officials.
Yes, you read that correctly. This is the same ‘ingenious’ proposal that Mr Keravnos submitted to Parliament in March 2023. The same proposal that faced unprecedented public backlash. The same bill that even MPs from the governing coalition parties opposed at the time.
Under the weight of public outrage that Mr Keravnos’s bill provoked, the government was forced to withdraw it.
They continued, of course, to drag their feet. This was followed by another supposedly brilliant proposal that some of you might remember – the notorious voluntary pension surrender scheme for state officials.
The scale of this farce was either laugh-out-loud funny or cry-your-eyes-out tragic, considering that the President who invented this proposal had refused for over a year to give up his own pension – a tidy £1,013 per month that he’s been receiving since age 45 (he’s now approaching 52).
Despite heavy criticism, he never deigned to surrender it, not even for the duration of his presidential term.
Many months have passed since then. Naively, we admit, we expected the government would finally be moved by public outrage over the multiple pensions scandal. That they would, at last, find a solution to definitively end this massive abuse.
Alas. The outcome is as described at the beginning of this article. Makis, who himself receives multiple pensions, returns with the same provocative proposal.
Generous lump-sum payments to replace multiple pensions. He declared shamelessly in June 2024: “The gratuity replaces multiple pensions – instead of multiple pensions, there will be a lump sum payment when the official leaves office”.
Simple as that. Taking money from one pocket and putting it in another.
He repeats this today in statements to our newspaper. Just as shamelessly. This time, to avoid bearing the full brunt of criticism as he did before, he’s made sure to clarify that the new bill was prepared under President Christodoulides’s instructions!
What’s not to understand? It’s so simple. Nikos Christodoulides, who receives a pension since age 45, instructed Makis to prepare legislation under which every state official entitled to multiple pensions will receive a lump sum instead.
And Makis, who has enjoyed multiple pensions for years, proceeded with drafting the bill! Simple as that.
“O my unfortunate people, good and beloved, always gullible and always betrayed”, as our national poet says – continue to believe them and tolerate them.
PS: THE MOCKERY CONTINUES WITH RETIREMENT AT 60. The cherry on top of this scandal is the matter of ministers’ and MPs’ retirement age. As you’ll recall, these ‘gods’ arranged to retire at 60 instead of 65. Something that could have been resolved with a simple legislative proposal and one vote still awaits…
