CHP Chairman Özgür Özel's call for a “by-election” has reignited the debate on a cynical nation. Özgür Özel called for a by-election at a press conference following the detention of Bursa Metropolitan Mayor Mustafa Bozbey and said, “We are in the days when the Constitution orders a by-election. The Speaker of the Assembly also has a position to take. We will do our part. We will have another very ambitious move with the decision to hold a by-election and the emergence of assurance,” he said, dropping the bomb in the lap of the CHP group.
How?
22 deputies will resign. There are already around 130 deputies. When you consider the number of deputies who are under indictment, it will be difficult to find 22 deputies in the party who are willing to take the risk of lifting immunity.
I have a suggestion for the CHP. Go to the people and apply “OSTRAKSISM” just as it did with the “primary elections”.
If you ask what this is, we can briefly call it the “Social and Political Exclusion” election. There is a democratic election held in Ancient Greece, which is the basis of democratic elections all over the world, and since 508 BC Ancient Greece has practiced the oldest form of democracy.
‘Ostracism or ’Pottery Court‘, also known as ’negative‘ or ’unfavorable vote‘, was a method used in Ancient Greece, especially in Athens, to expel citizens who became too powerful from the city. Every year, Kleisthenes, considered the founder of the democratic regime in Athens, asked voters, who were male landowners, to vote for the political leader or ’candidate' they most wanted to exile for the next ten years.
In this way, citizens would engrave the names of people called ‘Tyrants’, i.e. despotic people who seized political power by force and abused it, who held political power alone, who were ruthless, cruel and self-sufficient, on pieces of pottery (ostrakons), thus exposing that person.
In this practice, if the name of the suspected person received more than 6,000 votes, the candidate with the highest number of votes would be banished from the city for 10 years without any loss of wealth or honor, and no other punishment would be imposed.
In order to elect the 22 deputies who will return to the nation, I propose ostracism, i.e. going to the people. I mean, for a real democracy, maybe there should be negative voting first. Before many elections we have actually held primaries, which we call ‘ostracism’, but we have done it wrong. Let's ask the people for the 22 people who are unwanted in the party to have a by-election.
When the people should have voted on who should go from the elected, we did the opposite. If they want to do something new and exciting for the people, something that will make more noise than 101 rallies, then go for it.
Otherwise, as Franz Kafka said: “There is no such thing as choice. Because you don't elect them, they make you elect them.” CHP should not miss the opportunity to turn back from this mistake and political purification.