MPs in Cyprus have been told to agree, by Monday, on a series of bills to raise 6bn euros off the backs of the Cypriot people, or else face the banks being bankrupted and Cyprus being evicted from the EU.
This warning emerged from the Cypriot President Nicos Anastasiades talks on the crisis with the same EU-IMF ‘Troika’ that has destroyed Greece and is levelling the economies of Spain, Portugal and Italy.
Meanwhile, the talks on new Russian financial aid for Cyprus have failed, according to Russia’s finance minister. There will be no Russian bailout after Russian investors rejected Cypriot proposals, Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said yesterday.
Cyprus had offered Russia – which holds between one third and half of the island’s bank deposits – investments in its national banks and gas projects in return for financial aid.
‘The provision of a state loan was not considered because Europe has established a debt ceiling Cyprus is not allowed to surpass, and a loan would take them past that threshold,’ added Siluanov.
Cyprus has already agreed, with Turkey and Israel, a plan to share out the oil and gas wealth of the Eastern Med, and Russian intervention would have been regarded as an act of war and a serious harming of Turkish and NATO interests.
With 30bn euros of Russian deposits in Cyprus banks, the ruling Stalinist bureaucracy and the group of oligarchs that accept its political supremacy are rapidly being re-educated on the consequences of the crisis of capitalism.
The fear resulting from this crisis was reflected in the statement of the Russian PM Medvedev, contradicting Siluanov. He about turned saying that Russia had not given up the idea of aiding the Cypriot government to overcome the crisis.
The Russian leadership has been caught between the hammer and the anvil of the capitalist crisis.
The drive for a multi-billion dollar loan from Russia came after the Cypriot parliament rejected on Tuesday a tax on bank accounts that international creditors, including the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, had set as a condition for providing a 10-billion euro ($13-billion) bailout for Cyprus.
The Troika insists that their 10bn euro ‘rescue package’ for Cyprus depends on 5.8 billion euros being raised by Cyprus.
Cyprus needs about 17 billion euros in aid to shore up its budget and recapitalise its banks.
Nine bills in all make up the draft legislation that the Cyprus parliament is being told must be accepted.
Meanwhile, the queues are growing outside the cash machines.
The fear is catching. Outside cash machines, queues grew on Thursday and Friday with savers worried about their money – especially after the EU warning that the Cypriot banks may never re-open.
Businesses are now demanding payment in cash, and refusing to accept credit cards.
If there is a majority in the parliament to rob the Cypriot people as the Troika wants, the banks may open on Tuesday and face long queues of depositors seeking to get their cash out while they can.
Millions in Italy, France, Spain, Portugal and even the UK are wondering how long it will be before they get the same treatment from the banks.
There is only one way forward for the workers of Europe.
They must take their own fate into their own hands, and put an end to the rule of the bankers and bosses by overthrowing capitalism with socialist revolutions.
The banks and the major industries must be nationalised and put under workers management as part of a socialist planned economy throughout Europe.
The European Union must be overthrown and be replaced by the Socialist United States of Europe.
