Bulgaria's MPs are notorious for their proclivity to vote on behalf of colleagues, who have decided to go after their private business instead of working in the plenary hall. Photo by BGNES
Bulgaria's embattled Socialist-backed government will make a new attempt to cope with the job-skipping problem by adopting changes to the regulations on the MPs work.
Bulgaria's MPs are notorious for their proclivity to vote on behalf of colleagues, who have decided to go after their private business instead of working in the plenary hall.
The amendments, proposed by the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, envisage that a daily check is done to ensure the presence of all the MPs and those who are absent will not be paid anything.
Under current regulations MPs pocket one third of their monthly salary regardless of whether they attended or not the parliamentary sessions.
After the inaugural sitting of Bulgaria's 42nd National Assembly on May 21, Boyko Borisov, former Prime Minister and leader of formerly ruling GERB, declared that the party would boycott parliament sittings by non-attendance and refusal to register for voting until new early elections were scheduled.
The party has recently reiterated its determination to not attend parliament sittings unless they concern Election Code amendments or a date for new snap elections.
"We shall return to the Parliament only in the case of Election Code amendments and a clear, fixed date for snap elections,” Veselin Vuchkov, MP from the former ruling center-right party Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, GERB, and ex-Deputy Interior Minister, told 24 Hours daily on Wednesday.