Constitution panel to resume activity

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

The Constitution Conciliation Commission members will resume work. DAILY NEWS photo

Parliament’s Constitution Conciliation Commission has decided to resume work without setting any concrete time limitation, apparently in a bid to eliminate a possible deadline pressure during their already complicated work.

The decision was made at a dinner meeting under the presidency of Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek on April 8. The meeting came days after all four parties represented at the Parliament submitted their drafts to the Office of the Parliament Speaker on April 5. “The commission will resume its work. We hope that no article the debate of which is not completed will remain in the coming period,” Çiçek said in a written statement.

At the meeting, deputies from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) proposed to set the end of April as the new deadline for the commission’s work, otherwise it would mean putting off the process. The AKP’s proposal was met with reactions from all three opposition parties -- the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), who in response maintained that putting any time pressure on the commission would not be appropriate.

In response to the AKP’s suggestion that Çiçek could hold a new round of talks with political party leaders, CHP said this would be possible if Çiçek could convince Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to continue the work of the commission as well as to give up his aspirations for a presidential system.

Nonetheless, Çiçek intervened by saying that there was no need for such a leaders’ tour for the moment, but rather that it was necessary to accelerate the work in order to finalize it within a reasonable time period.