Turkish Cypriot leader Ersin Tatar on Friday said opposition party CTP leader Tufan Erhurman is “causing chaos”, at the end of a third week of political wrangling in the north over attempts to appoint a ‘parliament speaker’.
Speaking to Haber Kibris Web TV, he expressed “regret” that the process of electing a ‘speaker’ has been “unnecessarily prolonged”, while saying, “I accept that some members of parliament on the government benches have a different stance”.
On this matter, he said he would have expected the opposition to “provide support to facilitate the process”, and made clear his view that in his opinion, this had not been done.
“It is not right to create tension and chaos in this country. Now is not the time for elections. If the budget does not pass, elections will be held naturally,” he said, with the ‘state’ budget set to be announced in the coming weeks and then put through ‘parliament’ when it can be decided who the ‘speaker’ is.
With this in mind, he criticised Erhurman’s assertion on Thursday that a coup was being staged in the north’s ‘parliament’.
“This is so tragicomic, do our friends know what a coup actually is? They lined up to disgrace the TRNC in front of the whole world. Shame on them, I condemn it,” Tatar said.
He then passed comment on the specifics of the disagreement between the ruling coalition and the opposition regarding the result of the vote inside ‘parliament’ which took place to elect a ‘speaker’ last week.
The coalition claims Ziya Ozturkler received 26 votes in his favour and 23 votes to reject him in last week’s vote, but 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.
Tatar sided with the ruling coalition on this matter, saying, “a ballot paper with a few stamps on it is OK. If there are two votes in the same box, as I understand parliament’s internal regulations, it is valid,”
“Even I may have had to stamp a ballot paper more than once in the past. In the same box, if one is faint, the second stamp is considered a vote,” he added.
The CTP had filed an objection to the result the ruling coalition claimed with ‘parliament’s’ advisory board, but the ruling coalition ignored it and formally announced Ozturkler as ‘speaker’ in the ‘government’ gazette on Wednesday before holding a handover ceremony for him on Thursday.
As such, Erhurman had said on Thursday that if Ozturkler attempts to act as ‘speaker’ and hold sessions in ‘parliament’ as such, his party will not consider that ‘parliament’ is in session.
Tatar disagreed with this approach, saying, “parliament must convene, and if they are going to try to prevent it through tyrannical means, they will be held accountable for it.”
“Everyone must be careful about their own actions and statements. Right now, the people expect action from parliament and from the government. These people do not want elections,” he said.
This assessment was met with disagreement by the CTP’s secretary-general Asim Akansoy, who said, “the CTP is currently sitting at 35 per cent in the polls and Tufan Erhurman is in first place in all the presidential polls.”
“The people want to give us the responsibility of governing and trust us. We are ready to reestablish a just order … The CTP is ready to govern this country,” he said.
On Thursday, Erhurman had said the publishing of Ozturkler’s appointment in the gazette and Thursday’s handover ceremony were both “against the law” and “not valid”.
“There is currently no parliament speaker, this is all null and void,” he said, adding that the CTP “will not accept a situation which is against the law”.
Ozturkler had initially promised that should he fail to be elected within two rounds of voting, he would withdraw his candidacy. However, in the end, he went a full five rounds, bringing the total number of votes held since the start of the month to 15.
In the 15th round, the ruling coalition announced that Ozturkler had received 26 votes in his favour and 23 votes against and that he had thus been elected ‘speaker’.
However, opposition party CTP ‘MP’ Dogus Derya quickly revealed that three ballot papers the ruling coalition had counted as approvals had been stamped twice. In Turkish Cypriot elections, ballot papers which are stamped twice are counted as invalid.
As such, if the three votes are ruled invalid, Ozturkler would have received 23 votes in favour and 23 against, and, given the precedent set by the north’s ‘attorney-general’s’ office’s rejection of Zorlu Tore’s claim that he had been elected ‘speaker’ after failing to win more votes in favour than against, it is likely to be ruled Ozturkler did not win the election.
