There will be no vote in parliament on laws to change the framework regarding the authorities’ access to people’s private communications until after May’s parliamentary election, Akel MP Aristos Damianou said on Thursday.

Weekly sessions of the House legal committee had been held in an attempt to secure passage through parliament for plans which, if passed, would easier facilitate the state’s accessing of private communications.

However, Damianou wrote on social media that Thursday’s session had ended with committee members agreeing that the matter cannot be resolved before parliament dissolves itself in three weeks’ time ahead of the election.

“As a result of today’s House legal committee meeting, it has been agreed that the issue of amending the constitution regarding surveillance should remain under discussion. Consequently, it will not be brought to a plenary session with the current composition of parliament and will not be voted on,” he wrote.

Two weeks ago, the government had put forward a bill which foresees that decisions to access private communications will be taken by the Cyprus intelligence service chief, who will then inform a three-member committee within 72 hours of such a decision to monitor an individual’s private communications.

However, since then, Disy, currently the largest party in parliament, has decided that it will table an amendment which would reinsert into the bill a stipulation that the authorities acquire a court warrant before accessing private communications.

Previous plans laid out by the government had foreseen that the attorney-general of the day would be given the authority to issue written approval to intercept private communications, though these have now fallen by the wayside.

It had also been heard at other committee sessions that anyone found to have conducted unlawful surveillance could face up to ten years in prison.

The plans require 38 votes, rather than a simple majority, because they entail an amendment to Article 17 of the Republic of Cyprus’ constitution.

That article states that “every person has the right to respect for, and to the secrecy of, his correspondence and other communication if such other communication is made through means not prohibited by law”.

It adds that “there shall be no interference with the exercise of this right, except that in accordance with the law and only in cases of convicted and unconvicted prisoners and business correspondence and communication of bankrupts during the bankruptcy administration”.

The government’s planned changes will require that it invoke the “doctrine of necessity” to change the constitution’s Article 17.

The “doctrine of necessity” was borne out of the effective collapse of the bicommunal Republic of Cyprus as constitutionally envisioned in 1963 with the ejection of Turkish Cypriots from their constitutionally mandated positions within the state. It allows the Greek Cypriot community to unilaterally change the constitution in parliament.