Cyprus Mail 19 December 2019 - CM - Our View
As with most policy objectives aimed at being achieved through consensus, the bills for the reform of local government and the halving of the number of municipalities are in disarray. A few weeks after the proposal was presented by the former interior minister Constantinos Petrides, the objections to it are gathering momentum as more parties have their say.
So far, these objections have been voiced by mayors, who do not want their municipality absorbed by another, community leaders that want to be included into a communities’ complex rather than merged with a municipality, parties that want to preserve municipalities they control, and parties, like Diko that do not want municipalities to have too many powers.
How is it possible to achieve a consensus in these circumstances? What would be the end result of compromise solutions designed to keep as many people happy as possible, other than half-baked and ineffectual reform? What is happening now is inevitable given the way the reform has been handled by the government, which invited public consultation after submitting its proposal.
Further complicating the matter is that Petrides, the architect of the reform, is no longer interior minister and his successor will be less able to argue the government position, making the proposal more likely to be subjected to changes. In fairness, the absence of consistency in the rationale of the proposal would not help any minister argue the case for the proposed reform.
For instance, the main objective of the reform was to have bigger municipalities (ie representing more people) so they would be economically viable, but there will still be two municipalities with populations of less than 5,000, the minimum stipulated by the existing law for a place to acquire municipality status. This completely undermined the main reason for the reform – economic viability. There are another four proposed municipalities with populations below 20,000, while Nicosia will represent 175,000.
This lack of logical consistency to the reform proposal has left the door wide open for objecting parties, communities and mayors to try to impose their own wishes. The ludicrous idea of putting the reform to a referendum has also resurfaced, some politicians already arguing that any changes to the map of local government would require the consent and support of local societies. At least most of the parties recognize the idea of a referendum is a non-starter as it would allow a few thousand people to wreak havoc with the reform proposal.
Perhaps now that the government has understood the difficulty of the whole project it could return to the drawing board and change its reform plans, cutting the number of municipalities from the proposed 17 down to eight, so that they could all be viable and have real powers. All the bickering we are witnessing is a perfect excuse for the government to withdraw the bills and rethink them, because reducing the number of municipalities from 30 to 17 is just not good enough.
