Aid and dossiers before the local elections

There were lucky people among those whom the Tunceli Governorship distributed white goods in exchange of money provided by Social Assistance and Solidarity Foundation. We see on TV the trucks carrying them to families living in Tunceli, though there is no space or water service to these houses. Finally the High Election Board submitted a petition for investigation to the Tunceli Office of Prosecutor and the distributions came to a halt the other day. But of course this doesn’t mean they will stop for good.

Social expenditures explode

The CHP province head Cemal Özarslan terms this as an "election bribe." And, we’ll see how this 5 million liras-worth of white goods distributed by the governing AKP turns into votes for the AKP.

We come across important data in newspapers about similar social aid inspired by the assistance in Tunceli. The AKP government spent a total of 55,581,000 liras in 2007 for "social" purposes and just 51,700,000 liras in the first month of 2009, for the same reason. In 2008, after July in particular, social spending gradually increased and reached 427,600,000 liras for the year. It has jumped up over 50 million liras in January alone, just before the March 29 elections. And that rightfully brings a few questions in mind. Uğur Gürses of the daily Radikal wrote one of the most solid articles about the claims that the AKP government postponed the standby package with the IMF due to the approaching local elections. According to Gürses, the IMF asked reforms in local administrations and the AKP found this "unacceptable."

He says it is impossible to "transparently" follow expenditures of municipalities. Another question mark is that the AKP government adopted a bill to allow increased budgets for local administrations in July 2008 as the global economic crisis onset. In short, the global crisis doesn’t seem to be a threat to the AKP as it calculations over the local polls.

"Corruption" cases against politicians also grab attention as much as social assistance. For instance, the MHP has already proven that a villa owned by Ankara Mayor Melih Gökçek was built illegally; the villa that Gökçek first denied but then had to accept the ownership. Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbaş who is facing the accusations that the Saray Muhallebicisi he owns on the Bosphorus was also illegal now should answer another claim that he handed out money to several names close to the government for zoning. The dossier of course came out of the briefcase of the CHP Istanbul Mayor nominee Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Another dossier he revealed was about the partnership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s son and his wife with Cihan Kamer, owner of the Atasay jewelry company.

As social aid money is being thrown in the air the March 29 local polls will seem to be talked a lot more in the years to come.