Congress calculations in main opposition party

ANKARA - Hürriyet Daily News

Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said in the northern Anatolian resort of Abant that their party congress could be postponed for six months. The congress that needs to be held in May 2012 will be postponed until the fall of 2012. The party assembly which will convene in the upcoming days will make this decision. What is behind this crucial delay?

Will the “charter congress” that was promised as democratization for the party also be delayed?

The open reason for this is that if a congress is held in May 2012, then another congress needs to be convened on the year of local elections, which is 2014. For this reason, if the congress is held six months later, then the local elections will be circumvented.

But there is another hidden side to this. It is being whispered that Kılıçdaroğlu does not want to convene a congress which has a delegate structure that was formed with the influence of former secretary general Önder Sav and former leader Deniz Baykal. It is claimed that Kılıçdaroğlu wants to supervise provincial congresses until the fall and create a new delegate structure. For this reason, new members are fast being registered, it is said. Also, it is emphasized that the delay of the “charter congress” has this aim because this charter grants wide powers to the leader. A democratic charter and an election held with an open list might not enable Kılıçdaroğlu to form the party assembly he wishes to form.

Veterans of the CHP, Baykal and Sav are not sitting idly by. Their aim is to dominate the party assembly, as it is known that they have no aspiration for the top office. According to what I have heard, they will soon start collecting signatures to convene an extraordinary Istanbul congress. And maybe, with this, they will light the fuse of a domestic party fight after many months of peace.