Bulgarian Parliament Scraps Appointment of Controversial Official amid Protests

Politics » DOMESTIC | June 19, 2013, Wednesday // 11:02
Bulgaria: Bulgarian Parliament Scraps Appointment of Controversial Official amid Protests Delyan Peevski, a controversial Bulgarian lawmaker and media mogul. File photo

Bulgaria’s Parliament has expectedly retracted the appointment of controversial businessman and lawmaker Delyan Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security (DANS).

A total of 128 MPs voted in favor of the decision.

The opposition center-right GERB of former PM Boyko Borisov was absent from the vote as a sign of protest against the Socialist-led government that proposed Peevski for the job last week.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party and its coalition partner, the predominantly ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, have declared that they will ask the Constitutional Court whether Peevski may be reinstated as lawmaker.

Peevski will not attend Parliament until the Constitutional Court’s ruling is announced.

The election of Peevski, a 32-year-old media mogul and MP from DPS, stirred a wave of massive protests across the country, with tens of thousands of Bulgarians taking to the streets for five days now.

New massive anti-government protests are expected to take place in Sofia and other major cities on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, it emerged that Peevski had been granted access to top secret files three days before he was elected as head of DANS. It is unclear whether DANS had the legal grounds to grant him the access, according to local media.

Peevski, who runs Bulgaria's biggest newspaper and television group, was investigated for alleged corruption while serving as a Deputy Minister in the Socialist-led three-way coalition government (2005-2009), but was reinstated after the charges were dropped.

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Tags: protests, Delyan Peevski, Plamen Oresharski, State Agency for National Security, DANS, parliament

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