It has long been alleged that the government of the day in the TRNC attempts to buy votes through offering benefits, with the two most common benefits are awarding citizenship and advantageous land deals. Many TRNC news agencies were reporting last month on how these activities reached fever pitch as the toppled UBP government served out its last few weeks.
Now there is a call to action from the interim government led by Prime Minister Sibel Siber. She has appointed lawyer Gulsun Yucel as Minister of the Interior and Ms Yucel was on TV last night to outline her fight against corruption.
Bribery in Parliament
When questioned on this. She commented that if true, these allegations should be taken to the Attorney General, standing up in the middle of parliament and announcing them was not the right thing to do.
‘This was a show by the recently discredited government to prevent a vote of confidence ‘she said.
She reminded viewers that her government was attempting to remove parliamentary immunity for all MPs.
Citizenship
Ms Yucel will be looking into alleged citizenship bribe claims. She wants to know who was granted citizenship and why.
Currently all files are being examined. There were 833 citizenships granted in the two months of April and May. Most of these were done on the last two days of May in the last meeting of the Council of Ministers.
Ms Yucel asks’ if these were granted legally why were they rushed through on the last day? This does not look like ethical behaviour. All the files will be examined and any wrongdoings will be shared with the public and reversed.’
Leases
Ms Yucel has already started looking into these and has some preliminary numbers.
She says that the number of leases granted has been:
2009 13
2010 112
2011 112
2012 93
The interim PM will be investigating why so much state land has been leased out to private individuals. In addition she will focus on the startling number of leases that were rushed through in the month of May, the last month in power of the toppled UBP government.
Ms Yucel states that these amounted to 58 in one month alone and again questions their legality.
