CHP: Smear campaigns used as political tool

ANKARA

The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has criticized the government for using smear campaigns that include slander as a political tool against its mayoral candidates on the very eve of municipal elections, including the party chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and Ankara candidate Mansur Yavaş.

Kılıçdaroğlu, speaking at a meeting in Bursa on March 12, lashed out at an investigation launched against Ankara mayoral candidate Mansur Yavaş by a prosecutor in Ankara over fraud and forgery.

“Mayoral candidates have been chosen. They have waited for long and opened an investigation only days before the elections. We are not afraid of anybody. You are free to prosecute us whenever you want,” Kılıçdaroğlu stated.

The politics is carried out through smear campaigns and risk to turn into an internal fight, Kılıçdaroğlu urged the government. “We need a new political understanding that is not based on hostility,” he stated.

His words came after a prosecutor indicted Yavaş over fraud and another prosecutor issued a summary of proceeding against Kılıçdaroğlu on March 11.

“We want to live in peace and comfort in this beautiful country,” he said, describing politics as a race of delivering services to the people regardless their political, ethnic or religious background.

“I call on our mayors: You can’t tell anybody ‘I will not deliver services to you because you did not vote for me’. You will resolve the problems of everybody because the people authorized you. You can’t impose discrimination. You will apply to positive discrimination to the poor,” he said.

The mayors will move in full transparency when spending the municipal resources as all these moneys belong to the people, Kılıçdaroğlu said. “It’s the essence of democracies. Democracy exists if only you give an account of your actions.”

CHP leader described services provided by the mayors as a respect to the republic, to the people and to the equality between man and woman while stressing that the main notion for a strong democracy is the peaceful unity of a nation.