BY ERDAL SAFAK
SABAH- Napoleon Bonaparte once said that sometimes a bad law can be more useful than a good one. He was proven right when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) majority in Parliament passed a package of constitutional changes as a reaction to decisions of the Presidential Palace and Constitutional Court as well as the way the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) forced this spring's presidential election to be scuttled. Back then, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said that since the CHP wouldn't let Parliament elect a president, the nation would break this deadlock (in snap general elections). But when the AKP won a second term in government in the July elections, the key in the hands of public lost its meaning and importance. What's more, at that time, the AKP thought that the opposition wouldn't be able to wage a campaign against the Oct. 21 referendum and that if it tried to, the AKP would drive it into a corner by accusing it of not trusting the public. But this strategy backfired and instead drove the AKP into the corner.
Now, moved by warnings from CHP leader Deniz Baykal and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) leader Devlet Bahceli, the AKP trying to backtrack to prevent legal chaos. But it's not doing so completely. The constitutional changes will face the referendum on Oct. 21, but its clauses on popular election of the president will be removed. Will this last-minute move be enough to solve all the problems and dispel all the ambiguities? No. Turks living abroad are already voting at customs gates on this package, albeit the earlier version which includes popular election. Now when these sections are removed from the package, what will happen to the votes already cast? No one knows.
The right thing to do would call off the referendum, but the AKP refuses and so I have to play devil's advocate. Here's how things stand now: the current package of changes says that governments will have four-year terms (not five), the people will elect the president for five years, and he or she can be reelected (called 5+5). Politicians and the public agree on all this. In addition, both the AKP and non-governmental groups have suggested similar changes in a new constitution. In this case, as the above provisions will certainly be accepted, I think the only reason for insisting on holding the referendum is fear of a legal challenge saying that this Parliament can't draw up a new constitution but only change the current one. If this argument carries weight, the AKP might think that it would be right to conclude the current constitutional changes. I think there's no other reason for insisting on the referendum for a presidential election to be held seven years from now (when President Abdullah Gul's term ends).