The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) on Wednesday said they would file a criminal complaint about members of the Supreme Election Board (YSK) concerning a decision that impacted the results of a referendum on April 16, DHA reported.
“One judge added a very well-written annotation to the decision. We will file a criminal complaint against the other members. They evidently violated the law. A ‘gang member’ says these [results] are valid. According to what? He says, ‘The final decision belongs to me.’ Parliament passed a law, and you have to make a decision in accordance with it. We will continue to claim our rights,” Kılıçdaroğlu said during an interview on NTV.
Upon a question about their move to take the issue to the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) Kılıçdaroğlu said:
“We want to address the issue with a court decision. We will make our application in the coming days.”
Last week CHP İzmir deputy Musa Çam filed an application at the ECtHR in which he talked about the developments before and after the April 16 referendum and said that all public resources were used to ensure that a “yes” vote emerged from the referendum.
“The whole world accepts that the ‘no’ vote won the referendum. We do not accept the result that ‘yes’ won. It is not legitimate. The YSK made a decision contrary to the law. I am a hundred percent sure that the result was not in favor. Taking orders from the political authority, they [YSK] violated the law.”
Regarding a criminal complaint filed by the YSK concerning people who strongly criticized the board after the referendum, Kılıçdaroğlu said: “That’s fine with me. Votes were stolen by the YSK. The will of nation was usurped.”
YSK has also announced on Wednesday that it will file a criminal complaint against CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu over the latter’s remarks about the election watchdog. “It has been decided that criminal complaints will be filed in the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor’s Office against the concerned individuals for pointing the YSK chairman and its members as targets and for statements with criminal content,” it said in a statement.
The YSK decision to accept unstamped ballot papers “unless it can be proved that they were brought from outside the voting room” sparked a major debate on the legitimacy of the results of the referendum, in which the “yes” campaign emerged as the winner with 51.4 percent of the votes.
In response to a question of whether or not he will be a candidate for the presidential election in 2019, Kılıçdaroğlu said he is against a presidential candidacy of the chairman of a political party.
“The chairman of a political party should not be president, should not be a candidate in the presidential election. If he is elected, how he will take an oath of impartiality on his honor? Is my honor so cheap? The president must be president of 80 million people and must be impartial.” (SCF with turkishminute.com) May 3, 2017
