New rules boost speaker’s powers
Güncelleme Tarihi:
ANKARA - The purpose of changing the internal regulations of Parliament is to let it function more effectively. Currently the ruling party often accuses opposition parties of using the regulations to block legislative work whenever they know they won’t succeed by other means
Parliament is considering extensive changes to its own internal regulations that would grant the speaker and his board additional authorities and amend four laws, as well as some articles of the Constitution.
The draft regulations, which were prepared by the Conciliation Commission, were submitted to Parliament Speaker Köksal Toptan and political party groups. "While preparing the draft, we examined the internal regulations of German, Danish, French, English, Spanish, Italian and European parliaments," commission president Salih Kapusuz of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, said yesterday. "We also visited Hungarian, Italian and Spanish parliaments to gather detailed information."
Among other changes to come if the draft measures are adopted, the parliamentary voting procedure will be amended so deputies will use laptops activated by palm-print recognition during voting.
New committees will be established
The draft regulations will also form three new structures in Parliament, the Committee Chairmen’s Board, the Political Ethics Board and the Parliament Academy. The number of committees, which stands currently at 17, will be increased to 21 with the addition of the Commission of Equal Opportunity for Men and Women, the Information Technology Commission, the Research and Development Commission and the Future Commission.
Within the framework of the draft, working hours of Parliament will be extended from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays to 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. on the same days. The weekly working time of 12 hours will be increased to 18 hours with seven hours allocated for monitoring Parliament’s activities. If a deputy is warned twice in the same session, he will be banned from speaking, and if he persists in this manner, he will be censured and dismissed from Parliament. Conciliation Commission member Ali Topuz from the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, said the issue of parliamentary immunity was not discussed during the study on internal regulations since there is no consensus on the topic between the groups.