Not democracy but elections targeted with package, says main opposition leader

GAZİANTEP

DHA Photo

Main opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has said the package of reforms that the prime minister announced should be called an “election package,” rather than a “democracy package,” as its content is not directly related to the fundamentals of democracy.

“First, don’t say democracy package,” Kılıçdaroğlu told reporters yesterday in Gaziantep, when he was asked about his comments regarding the package. ”It’s not a democracy package, it is an election package,” he said.

He claimed the package could not be claimed to be democratic, as it was ordered by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, without the inclusion of representatives of the public.
 
“The prime minister made an announcement on Sept. 30. People will accept this announcement or not, it is a separate deal. But democracy is a different thing,” he said, accusing the prime minister of not sustaining democracy even within his own party.

Kılıçdaroğlu mainly targeted the selection of deputies by the central party authority and low representation of the people’s votes in the Parliament.

“You can’t tell people to vote for somebody by putting a list in front of them made up of candidates you decided on by yourself,” he said. “People should elect their representatives. If it called for that, I would call it a democracy.”

Kılıçdaroğlu said this candidate selection process was introduced by the government who staged the Sept. 12 coup in Turkey and his party stood against coup law, which according to him, needed to be changed.

Kılıçdaroğlu also defended maximum representation of the people’s will in the Parliament, signaling his support for the elimination of the 10 percent threshold that political parties need to enter the Parliament.

“[A party] that collected 1 percent of votes should be able to send at least an MP to the Parliament. What would happen? Are the citizens that voted for the party that gained 1 percent of the votes not our citizens?” he stressed.

He continued his statements by mocking the lifting of the ban on the usage of letters that are not in the Turkish alphabet, specifically the letters “q,” “w” and “x.”

“I wonder if the prime minster has ever gone to a toilet. ‘W’ is already written on toilet doors,” he said, referring to the common usage of “WC” used to refer to the toilet sign.