The Bulgarian Parliament approved Wednesday the appointment of the former Minister of Interior and of Justice Georgi Petkanov to the country's Constitutional Court.

Petkanov was supported by the three parties from the governing coalition - the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and his own National Movement for Stability and Progress led by the former tsar and former PM Simeon Saxe-Coburg.

The appointment was approved with 135 votes in favor, 21 votes against, and 1 abstaining.

The rightist opposition demanded that Petkanov's candidacy be withdrawn because he was not worthy of being a member of the Constitutional Court.

Petkanov, who is a professor of law at Sofia University, was the Minister of Interior in the cabinet of PM Simeon Saxe-Coburg (2001-2005), and the Minister of Justice in the present cabinet of PM Sergey Stanishev until he retired about a year ago (2005-2007), and was replaced by the present Justice Minister Miglena Tacheva.

The newly appointed Constitutional Judge said he new work would be hard but he hoped to able to execute it very well, expressing readiness to comply with the Constitution's provisions. In his words, the Constitutional Court was an institution with a great authority.

Bulgaria's Constitutional Court was created in 1991 with the adoption of the present Constitution of the country. Its main function is to rule on the constitutionality of the laws and other acts of Parliament, and of the Presidential decrees.

Another institution, the Supreme Administrative Court, has jurisdiction over the constitutionality of the acts of the government and of the different ministries.

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