Turkish government not held accountable for expenditures: Main opposition CHP

ANKARA – Hürriyet Daily News

CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu attends the opening of a center for disabled people in Ankara’s Batıkent district. CİHAN photo

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has accused the government of being “unaccountable for its expenditures,” saying the government has actually been “defrauding taxpayers” by refusing to obey the principle of accountability.

In a speech delivered while opening a center for disabled people in Ankara’s Batıkent district yesterday, Kılıçdaroğlu spoke of a “social democrat” understanding of running municipal services, and referred to the ongoing debates at Parliament over the draft budget law for the fiscal year 2014.

“They [the government] are not able to give an account of your money or of where this money was spent,” he said, using a Turkish idiom in a bid to underline that all citizens, particularly “poor orphans,” should have a say on the government’s budget.

In the run up to the local elections scheduled for March 2014, the main opposition leader suggested that the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) was intimidating citizens by saying they would not receive services if they do not vote for AKP candidates.

“There is a CHP-run municipality in Yenimahalle, are you receiving services? If you spend each penny appropriately and believe that serving the citizens is a sacred duty, then you don’t have any issue of accountability,” Kılıçdaroğlu said.

Municipalities run by the CHP “do not discriminate between voters while providing services,” he stressed, defining this as the “requirement of a social democratic understanding” that puts the human being at the center without any discrimination. “There is pressure on municipalities, particularly on the CHP-run municipalities, but we are not afraid or timid at all,” Kılıçdaroğlu said, challenging the government and urging it to intensify inspections on CHP-run municipalities.

“We are respectful for the human being and we believe that being responsible for the citizens is a matter of honor,” he said.

During last week’s debates at Parliament, the CHP’s attacks on the government were mainly based on the Court of Accounts’ failure to send audit reports of state institutions’ expenditures to Parliament. The CHP thus deemed the budget drafted by the government “illegitimate.”

In a speech delivered on Dec. 10, Kılıçdaroğlu noted that his party had asked for the auditing reports to be submitted, but this request was not met. He suggested that the auditing reports were “not clean,” adding that otherwise his party would have been given permission to inspect all reports.

Meanwhile, Mansur Yavaş, the former mayor of Ankara’s Beypazarı district, has given the green light to a proposal by the CHP to run as its candidate for the Ankara Metropolitan Mayoral post in the upcoming elections.