Political Party hit by mass resignations
A FORMER government party has been hit by the resignation of two MPs and 64 party members.
MPs Ayşegül Baybars and Jale Refik Rogers announced their resignation from the People’s Party (HP) on Monday.
A joint statement from Baybars and Rogers said: “The People's Party, which set out claiming to make radical change and present a new politics to society, has drifted away from its founding principles over time and lost its assertion to create new policies with intra-party democracy, many different viewpoints and common sense.
“The unity and integrity that has broken down has not been restored by the party leadership. The party has turned into a structure that has lost its consensus culture and they have lost their belief that they can benefit society with the party’s current structure.”
The statement said that in addition to the MPs, 64 others, including central executive board members, founding members, party council members and district administration members, also submitted their resignation letters to HP headquarters.
The statement noted that in addition to Baybars and Rogers, former HP MP Gülşah Sanver Manavoğlu also resigned as a member of the party, although she did not issue any statement confirming or denying her resignation.
The split within the party became public in May, when Baybars and Rogers refused to abide by an HP decision to withdraw from Parliament as a form of protest against the way the TRNC is being run.
In response to the resignations, a statement from the HP said that they “should have resigned six months ago for failing to follow the party’s decision”.
The resignations mark the latest development in the rise and fall of the People’s
Party, which was established in 2016.
It was set up by Kudret Özersay and initially attracted a large following with its promises of “clean politics” and transparency.
In the 2018 general election the HP stormed to third place in the polls, returning nine MPs, and was one of the four parties that formed a four-party coalition that year, with Dr Özersay taking on the dual role of Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, and Ms Baybars as Interior Minister.
However many blamed Özersay for causing the collapse of the four-party coalition in 2019 and the party lost much support when Özersay decided to form a subsequent coalition with the National Unity Party.
In the first round of the 2020 Presidential election Özersay received just 5.74 per cent of the votes cast, compared to the 21.25 per cent he polled in the 2015 Presidential vote.
His party also suffered in the most recent general election, held last January, finishing fourth with less then seven per cent of the votes and seeing their number of seats in Parliament slashed from nine to three.