North ‘PM’ Ustel submits bid to retain party leadership

The north’s ‘prime minister’ Unal Ustel on Monday submitted his candidacy to retain leadership of his party the UBP, promising “stability” should he win the forthcoming party leadership election.

The UBP, the north’s largest party, is set to hold its party conference on September 21, with Ustel to be challenged for the party’s leadership by backbench ‘MP’ Hasan Tacoy.

Ustel submitted his candidacy at the UBP’s headquarters in northern Nicosia flanked by his wife, various members of his cabinet including his interior and foreign ‘ministers’ Dursun Oguz and Tahsin Ertugruloglu, and a number of UBP mayors.

“We worked, the government succeeded, and our country won. Now it is time to complete all the projects we started. Now it is time to turn new dreams into reality,” he said.

He then warned that the north’s three-party coalition ‘government’ may suffer “instability” if he is dethroned as UBP leader and thus ‘prime minister’, and said that for this reason, the forthcoming party conference should be “a conference to not approve new government crises”.

He also listed the various successes of his time in office so far, pointing out the north’s local government reform, “which was said to be not doable”, the opening of the new terminal at Ercan (Tymbou) airport, and various new roads which have been constructed across the north.

On the matter of the economy, he said, “we did not let our people experience salary crises like some governments did. Despite all the economic difficulties, we made historically unprecedented salary improvements for our public and private sector employees.”

“We made our minimum wage one of the highest minimum wages in Europe,” he added.

Speaking on the campaign so far, he said “no mud has been left unthrown” at him and his family so far, and that “some people have exceeded the limits of respect”.

He then promised that the UBP would “emerge stronger than ever” from its party conference, before returning to his key theme of stability.

“While others are after chaos, I promise you stability. We will continue to new victories with our party,” he said.

Asked by journalists to comment on Tacoy’s campaign so far, he said, “Tacoy is our child. He is an MP from our party. What he says is his business. He may have said something because he got a little bit excited.”

He was also asked to comment on reports of the Turkish embassy “intervening” in the leadership election and said, “I will just laugh it off”.