Power goes out at north Cyprus ’s new ‘parliament’ during session

Electricity went out at the north Cyprus’s new ‘parliament’ building during a plenary session on Tuesday, an incident the opposition claim was deliberate.

Technical issues began to arise while opposition party CTP ‘MP’ Devrim Barcin was giving a speech about the TRNC’s ‘prime minister’s’ office allegedly paying full salaries to people who do not work at the ministry.

According to Barcin, those on full salaries with no job include Fatma Unal, who is also ruling coalition party UBP’s Kyrenia women’s branch chairwoman.

Unal is known to be a close ally of the TRNC’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel, and is also one of the many people to have been arrested in connection with the ongoing “fake diploma scandal” in north Cyprus. She was released on bail last July.

As Barcin began talking about Unal, the live television feed of the ‘parliament’ was cut, with public broadcast channel BRT2, which ordinarily broadcasts ‘parliamentary’ ongoings live started airing a documentry.

This drew the suspicions of the CTP’s secretary-general Erkut Sahali, who made an intervention on the matter when the television feed was restored.

“As soon as Devrim started talking about staff at the prime minister’s office, parliament’s television feed went off the air. It is currently showing a documentary about wetlands. I demand an investigation into this matter,” he said.

Shortly after, the power went off in its entirety and ‘MPs’ were plunged into darkness.

In his speech, Barcin had said he had visited the ‘prime minister’s’ office and asked about Unal, and that he had been told that “no one sees this woman at work from one day to the next.

“I stopped by the prime minister’s office before coming here. There are dozens of people who are registered there and receive salaries without going to work, despite being assigned to do so. No one sees this woman at work from one day to the next,” he said.

He added that Unal “only appears to be on duty on paper but does not attend any shifts”. 

Later in his speech, he said that Ustel’s undersecretary Huseyin Cahitoglu had, “after the situation came to light”, written to the north Cyprus's sports department’s Kyrenia district directorate and asked that Unal be “removed from public view”. The sports department in the north falls under the competency of the ‘prime minister’s’ office.

“They said she should be out of sight, close to our hearts. ‘She should not be seen in public so that no one will say anything’,” Barcin said.

He added that he had heard of other UBP members receiving salaries from the ‘prime minister’s’ office without going to work.

Tuesday’s session is not the first time in recent months that the matter of the ‘parliament’s’ television feed, or a temporary lack thereof, has caused tensions among Turkish Cypriot ‘MPs’.

In October last year, the north Cyprus’s ‘government’ cut the live television feed after ‘deputy speaker’ Fazilet Ozdenefe attempted to open ‘parliament’ during a political crisis which centred around the election of a ‘speaker’.