/ world today news/ The managers rub their hands contentedly at the comments that it should be completely removed
GERB’s long-term and purposeful attempts to depersonalize parliamentary control and to turn the Friday questioning into a sham and formal reporting of the executive power to the legislature are now almost completely crowned with success. After Prime Minister Boyko Borisov demonstrated for years in three governments that he did not respect this legislative practice even as much as a cabbage head, his attitude gradually conquered his subordinates as well.
A few days ago, the regional minister Nikolay Nankov beat up in an extremely scandalous way an important topic on which the fair conduct of the elections depends: the cleansing of the so-called dead souls from the voter lists of his wards GRAO and bringing them up to date. Nankov was asked what he intends to do as a minister to verify the information that more than 800,000 people with addresses in Bulgaria live outside the country, and how he will stop the practice of the signatures of people who from they have not returned to the country for years. Instead of admitting the problem and giving a substantive answer, the minister proceeded to explain that “dead souls” did not mean people who actually died, but those who did not exercise their right to vote. “With this term, a number of politicians and sociologists have made a career,” he decided to be original. In jokes and banter, the 9 minutes allotted to discuss the issue were not even fully condensed, after which the minister moved on to other matters. And the voters, who were hoping to hear something about upcoming measures to combat the manipulated vote, were once again left with their fingers in their mouths.
The attitude of Minister Nankov towards the questions of the people’s representatives, a large part of which are submitted to them by the electoral districts,
not an isolated case at all
It also gives a more general idea of how GERB and the governing coalition view reporting to voters. One of the first things that this National Assembly did was to move the parliamentary control from the broadcast of BNT 1 to that of the much less watched BNT 2. The decision was taken at the second session of the 44th Parliament, when the parliamentary rules were voted on . The idea came from “United Patriots”, but in the course of the speeches it became clear that GERB was also behind it. The opposition countered by arguing that shifting control to lower-rated television was a form of censorship. The BSP continued that the real beneficiary of this proposal is Boyko Borisov and GERB and that the small coalition partner has undertaken to defend the back of the big party.
The then-future Deputy Prime Minister Valery Simeonov denied pulling foreign chestnuts out of the fire and in his typical style asked if the opposition was coming to work to be shown on TV. “We are very great, we are unique, we are unique, we must be broadcast at any cost, and on Channel 1,” Simeonov insisted. As an argument for the move, he read letters from the management of BNT about how many times the television had to reshape its program schedule because of the Friday questions and answers.
At the same meeting, the deputies sent the so-called flash control
With him, every first Wednesday of the month, the prime minister, his deputies and the ministers came to the National Assembly and answered current questions. Instead, the rulers decided that the ministers should report to the line committees. During the debates, GERB launched the thesis that it was created some time ago to extract “political dividends”, and Pavel Shopov from “Ataka” called it a “strong propaganda tool”.
After the suspension of blitz control and the transfer of control over BNT 2, the opposition accused GERB of changing the constitutional status of the republic from parliamentary to prime ministerial with every passing day, of moving the making of the most important decisions outside the National Assembly and of not even giving the deputies the opportunity to they ask the leader, the prime minister, what he is doing and why he is doing it.
The following months proved that statement to be absolutely true. During the eight months of this parliament’s existence, Borissov participated in parliamentary control only twice – in a regular one in June and in another one in July, dedicated to the White Paper of the EU and Jean-Claude Juncker’s idea of a five-speed Europe. The second time, Borisov came to the deputies not to answer simple questions, but for a whole discussion, initiated by the leader of the BSP, Kornelia Ninova. Before that, and subsequently, the majority in the National Assembly several times did not allow Borissov to be heard – about the migrant crisis, in the commission for the National People’s Congress.
In fact, the resignation of the former parliamentary chief Dimitar Glavchev was also reached after he tried to prevent Ninova from declaring loudly that the majority was hiding its leader. Before Ninova took the podium, GERB and “United Patriots” rejected another request for a hearing of Borisov, in which he had to explain who the deputy was with the drugs and who bought votes.
Borisov himself also stated that he does not like going to the parliament,
and indirectly admitted that he instructed his deputies to spare him such visits: “I avoid going to the parliament, because one must have very strong nerves to withstand such lies and insults,” said the prime minister not long ago. And despite Glavchev’s efforts to spare him a “disgrace”, after that his boss did not hesitate for a moment to pull his chair out.
Borisov’s example is proving more and more contagious for his deputies as well. For the 27 parliamentary controls from April to December 1, coalition Deputy Prime Minister Krasimir Karakachanov took part in them most often – 7 times. GERB Deputy Prime Ministers Tomislav Donchev and Ekaterina Zaharieva appeared in the National Assembly three times each. Valery Simeonov once answered the questions of the deputies and another time he was the main actor in a discussion about the demographic crisis. During this period, the mentioned regional minister Nankov, interior minister Valentin Radev, energy minister Temenuzka Petkova, environment and water minister Neno Dimov, etc., stood most regularly on the parliamentary platform.
The apparent neglect of parliamentary control boomerangs with an increasingly visible decline in the desire to have serious debates, and to have debates at all. The empty hall during the Friday sessions has been a trademark of the National Assembly for years, and now the lack of replies and rejoinders, clarifying questions, etc., is becoming an increasingly common practice. More and more regularly, MPs from the majority ask questions to the ministers with a single goal – for the latter to make PR and brag, often about rather controversial achievements. In addition, voluntary or involuntary admissions can often be heard from the parliamentary rostrum that the answerer is seeing his answer for the first time because it was pushed into his hands by a colleague just before entering the hall. Comical spelling, repetitions, stuttering follow. Listening to all this, in Internet forums one can often read comments that parliamentary control is completely useless and redundant and that it is time to abolish it. Opinions from which the rulers are surely rubbing their hands with satisfaction.
| Instead of saying how he will fight with the “dead souls” in the voter lists, Minister Nankov indulged in semantic analyzes during the parliamentary control. |
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