‘Çiçek endangering new charter’
ANKARA-Hürriyet Daily News
Parliament Speaker Çiçek is hit by a number of criticisms by the main opposition. DHA photo
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has raised fresh concerns over the constitution-making process, charging that Parliament Speaker Cemil Çiçek’s conduct is threatening the constitutional commission’s work.Çiçek is passive, evades his duties, and shies away from taking responsibility in the inter-party Constitution Conciliation Commission, tasked with drafting Turkey’s new charter, the CHP’s Atilla Kart told reporters yesterday.
The speaker has failed to visit the eight members of Parliament who remain in jail, stayed mum on issue of the assault on independent deputy Ahmet Türk by a plainclothes policeman during the recent Nevruz unrest, and refrained from taking any action on Parliament’s Education Commission’s controversial adoption of the much-criticized education reform bill, Kart said. Parliament has been left “under the tutelage of a post-modern dictator,” he said, referring to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The speaker’s conduct has deepened the CHP’s concerns over the sustainability of the constitution-making process, he added.
Another CHP commission member, Rıza Türmen, said that the confident and supportive atmosphere the panel needs cannot be achieved if Çiçek continues to act in line with the “patronizing” policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Erdoğan has already angered the opposition by insisting that the 26 constitutional articles amended by the 2010 referendum should remain untouched. The opposition argues that the said amendments, which profoundly reshaped Turkey’s top judicial bodies and courts, have placed the judicial system under the ruling party’s control.
