TURKIYE- Columnist Yilmaz Oztuna comments on events surrounding the Nov. 3 elections. A summary of his column is as follows:
Parliament’s one-day session yesterday made the date for polls set for Nov. 3 a near-certainty. Moreover, those still intent on postponing elections have little-to-no chance of reconvening Parliament for an extraordinary session or making it change its mind. Yet yesterday’s decision to go on recess until elections won by just 21 votes, a margin which must give the party leaders pause. The parties’ across-the-board failure to draw up decent candidate lists led to this shamefully close margin. All the lists included characters whose faults are well, and publicly, known. What’s more, none of the lists boasted a team genuinely qualified enough to govern the country. Claims that every deputy is qualified to be a minister -- which cannot be said in any country -- are stupefying. Furthermore, the need for a second vote to keep the November elections on track was deplorable, and the reasons behind this cry out for examination. Some of the parties which initially voted to hold elections this fall are clearly headed for defeat. Their leaders and supporters will have to pack their bags and quit the government. Now we’re headed towards a general election which, it is said, will be closely followed by new polls should the first results prove unsatisfactory. The weakness and unbelievable incompetence of the current government made early polls inevitable. Moreover, yesterday’s Parliament vote coincided closely with two separate and significant visits to Ankara, that of Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz and US Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jones. Even as we prepare for polls, the wardrums are beating. Unless the US is swayed from its apparent determination to strike against Iraq, this issue will top the agenda of our post-election government. So elections are going forward in such an atmosphere, and everyone agrees the results on Nov. 4 will be a surprise.
SOURCE: OFFICE OF THE PRIME MINISTER, DIRECTORATE GENERAL OF PRESS AND INFORMATION