The Chair of the Commission on changes in the election legislature was forced to end the Thursday discussion prematurely due to lack of quorum. Photo by Sofia Photo Agency
The Bulgarian MPs from the Commission on changes in the election legislature decided Thursday to keep the election system intact.
The decision was made after the proposal of the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) for the introduction of a mixed electoral system with 31 majority elected Members of the Parliament (MPs) was rejected.
The Commission's members decided to stay with the current proportional system. The votes of the BSP and of ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms Party (DPS) representatives proved insufficient by just one single vote to adopt the leftist proposal.
Tatyana Doncheva was the only BSP MP who abstained from voting for or against the proposal.
The removal of the proposal's text led to the removal of the previously approved change to raise a coalition's election threshold to 8%.
The DPS representatives commented the Commission did not have a clear opinion on the changes and demonstratively left the meeting. The Commission Chair, Angel Naydenov, was then forced to end the discussion prematurely due to lack of quorum.