North ruling coalition ‘MP’ breaks ranks, calls ‘speaker’ election illegal

Turkish Cypriot ruling coalition party UBP ‘MP’ Yasemin Ozturk broke ranks with the coalition’s stance on last month’s ‘parliament speaker’ election, declaring that the three votes which the ‘government’ had claimed had swung the election in favour of its candidate were “against the law”.

The ruling coalition insists that Ziya Ozturkler, who belongs to coalition party the UBP, was duly elected ‘speaker’ three weeks ago during a vote held among ‘MPs’, receiving 26 votes in his favour and 23 votes to reject him.

However, the opposition claims three of the votes counted by the ‘government’ as having been in his favour were actually invalid as the ballot papers had been stamped multiple times.

Ozturk chairs ‘parliament’s’ legal committee, and told news website Haber Kibris Web TV that “according to the law, there should be a secret ballot and an open count. The three votes are against the law. This should have been discussed by committee and concluded.”

She also referred to internal politics within the UBP, a point which is particularly poignant for her given the fact that she was part of the group of five UBP ‘MPs’ who had openly supported an unsuccessful leadership challenge launched by Hasan Tacoy against party leader and ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel in September.

“We knew the Tacoy supporters would be accused, so we had to make our votes seen,” she said, seemingly suggesting that the three ballot papers which had been stamped multiple times had belonged potentially to herself and others who supported Tacoy’s leadership challenge.

Tacoy had rejected the rumours that he and his supporters had been voting against the ruling coalition’s nominees on the first day of voting, over a week and a half before the coalition declared Ozturkler ‘speaker’.

After previous ‘speaker’ Zorlu Tore and his successor as the coalition’s nominee Kutlu Evren were both rejected by ‘MPs’ during five rounds of voting on October 7, he said, “we do not know who did not vote. The prime minister should decide why this situation came to pass by looking at his close friends.”

On Wednesday, Ozturk also seemed to contradict Ozturkler’s claims that the opposition had not objected to what he claims was his election on the day of the vote.

“We should have evaluated the objections on the day at parliament’s advisory board. I said on the day we should have the advisory board come to a decision and evaluate the objections, but we did not get a result. Instead of playing into more chaos, we need to talk about what can be done,” she said.

Then evaluating the situation as a whole, she said, “as a lawyer, I cannot call a wrong situation right. If someone makes a mistake, there must be a price to pay. So long as no one pays the price, mistakes will continue to be made.”

Opposition party CTP leader Tufan Erhurman and UBP deputy leader Sunat Atun both called press conferences on Tuesday night to express their conflicting opinions.

Erhurman called for ‘parliamentary’ elections to be held to resolve the crisis, and insisted that “the entire parliament” should agree that the three votes were invalid and that Ziya Ozturkler has thus not been elected ‘speaker’.

Atun went on the offensive, accusing the CTP of “coercion”, being “extremely anti-democratic” and of staging a coup d’état.

He appeared to use a modicum of circular logic in his statements, saying that ‘deputy speaker’ and CTP ‘MP’ Fazilet Ozdenefe had been wrong to declare that Ozturkler’s attempted convening of ‘parliament’ was null and void was wrong as Ozturkler had been declared ‘speaker’ in the ‘government’ gazette.

This is despite the fact that the decision only appeared in the gazette because the ‘government’ willed it so, and the legality of that move is exactly what the opposition is disputing.

He then called Ozdenefe “despotic” and “dictatorial”, and then accused her of “killing democracy”.

“Yesterday’s usurpation of the parliament, occupying it, and attempting to stage a coup against the authority of the parliament speaker were firsts in history,” he said.

Tuesday’s session was the first time that both the ruling coalition and the opposition agreed that ‘parliament’ was in session, though the session barely held together when arguments began over whether the session was the eighth or the ninth since the legislative year began on October 1.

Ozdenefe declared she had opened the eighth session of the year and ruling coalition ‘MPs’ immediately threatened to leave the chamber. The problem was then resolved, to an extent, by Ozdenefe saying she had opened “the eighth session according to the CTP and the ninth according to the UBP”.