Since the Cold War era, the communist party Akel has viewed certain international organisations as centres of sinister, capitalist plotting. Nato, CIA, EEC (as the EU was known) have always been synonyms of evil as was the IMF, and in the last few days the latter has been the target of vicious attacks by the party because of proposals submitted to the government.

On the front page of the party mouthpiece, Haravghi, Tuesday’s banner headline said, “The government prepared wage cuts with on order recipe from the UN,” while Wednesday’s said, “Many anti-worker proposals of the IMF … in government plans.” The finance ministry was processing the list of IMF proposals with the aim of adopting them, reported the paper, which seems to believe that working with the fund was a type of treachery.

President Nikos Christodoulides defended the government saying that “we do not demonise and we do not reject the proposals of the IMF,” but this was viewed as an admission of guilt by the communists. It was proof that “the Christodoulides government was following a neoliberal austerity policy,” said the paper which claimed the IMF proposals were seen as “a gift from heaven”. This is nothing more than leftist propaganda as nobody could accuse this government of following neoliberal austerity, given how it has been spending money.

Recognising that the continuous growth of the public payroll is a threat to public finances, the government sought the help of the IMF to bring it under control and the fund made a series of very sensible proposals such as changing the reward system to bring public sector pay closer to the private sector by scrapping CoLA and the 13th salary and the contracting out of services to the private service which would lead to the reduction of jobs. Christodoulides said on Tuesday that the government was already working on their implementation, which must have really frightened Akel, hence the claims that workers’ rights were under threat.

The reality was that it was public workers’ privileges that would be cut if the IMF’s proposals were implemented, privileges that lead to the continuous growth of the public payroll and do not exist in the private sector. And there are no better-qualified professionals than the economists of the IMF to make proposals on how this could be achieved. They are not the nasty, worker-hating, neoliberals that Akel presents them as, but experienced and highly qualified technocrats offering a rational solution to a complex issue.

They are certainly better qualified than the economists of Akel and of the trade unions, who led the state to bankruptcy in 2012 when the party was in power. Whether the government will follow the advice of the experts or give in to the union bosses and the communists remains to be seen.