Parties fail to agree on who will chair House committees

The House selection committee has failed to agree on the composition of the 16 parliamentary committees and the issue has now been referred to party leaders who will meet on Thursday, CyBC reported on Tuesday.

Chaired by House president Annita Demetriou, Tuesday’s meeting was attended by three representatives of Disy and Akel and two from Diko as only parties who have at least seven MPs and therefore constitute a parliamentary group make up the selection committee.

Under the constitution and House rules, the same requirement applies to committee chairmanships, but previous practice has been to ‘cede’ three or four of these posts to the smaller parties.

On the basis of the size of the parliamentary groups, Disy and Akel should each get six chairmanships and Diko four.

Political parties are understood to be at odds on how to proceed, with Akel saying that it is willing to cede the chairmanship of the House Environment Committee to the Greens but stipulating that it would be making no concessions for far-right Elam. Disy could do so, since they were “pals”, Akel general secretary Andros Kyprianou told CyBC on Tuesday morning.

Smaller parties have said that chairmanships should be fairly distributed and have indicated that they disagree with the concept that chairmanships would be assigned to then as a concession.