A lawmaker from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has filed a motion to investigate the debts of municipalities where the mayorship was transferred from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), to opposition parties in the March local elections, the Cumhuriyet daily reported on Monday.
The mayorship in many provincial and district municipalities in Turkey changed hands after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP suffered its worst election defeat since coming to power two decades ago in the March 31 local polls, where the CHP emerged as the country’s leading party after decades out of power.
The CHP garnered 37.7 percent of the vote, maintained control of key cities and secured substantial gains in other regions, while the AKP, for the first time in 22 years, came in second, garnering only 35.4 percent of the vote.
Following the elections, in many municipalities where the mayorship was transferred from the AKP and MHP to the CHP and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party), the new mayors revealed the municipalities’ debts and the lavish spending during the tenure of the former mayors.
In his motion CHP lawmaker Mahmut Tanal called on parliament to investigate the total debt of the municipalities that changed hands in the latest elections and the breakdown of these debts into discrete categories.
“The debt burden of the municipalities taken over … reveals how the public’s money has been squandered. Many district municipalities, with populations not even reaching 100,000, have left behind debts amounting to millions of lira. In some provinces and districts the per capita debt exceeds 10,000 lira ($306),” he said.
The lawmaker said the “policy of impunity” in Turkey, where wrongdoings by those close to or members of the ruling AKP go unpunished, should change.
President Erdoğan and AKP politicians frequently attract criticism for wasting taxpayers’ money due to their lavish spending and luxurious lifestyles at a time of increased poverty in the country.
Many link the party’s loss of support in the elections to its waste of the country’s resources, among other reasons, amid skyrocketing inflation and a constant loss in the people’s purchasing power.