The party of Slavi Trifonov – “There is such a people” starts from tomorrow the procedure for holding a national referendum on convening a Grand National Assembly and changing the form of government – from a parliamentary to a presidential republic. This became clear just after a short press release from ITN.
Here is what the party announced:
“On 23.01.2023, Monday, at 11 a.m., representatives of the initiative committee for organizing and coordinating a petition for the production of a national referendum will submit a notification to the chairman of the 48th National Assembly of the Republic of Bulgaria, with which the petition for the production of a national referendum will begin referendum on the following question: Do you support the holding of elections for a Grand National Assembly to decide the issues of changes in the form of government from a parliamentary republic to a presidential republic? The notice will be submitted to the Administration of the National Assembly, entrance “Dondukov”.
We remind you that already last year, Slavi Trifonov announced that he was considering proposing a change to the state management model. It was subsequently corrected by Iva Miteva, who specified that Trifonov did not mean a fully presidential republic, but rather a “semi-presidential” one, in which the president would appoint the prime minister and the cabinet, and the National Assembly would be directly elected and control executive power.
Slavi Trifonov has experience with referendums and years ago over 2.5 million people supported his poll with three questions:
1. Do you support the people’s representatives to be elected with a majoritarian electoral system with an absolute majority in two rounds?
2. Do you support the introduction of compulsory voting in elections and referenda?
3. Do you support the annual state subsidy granted to finance political parties and coalitions to be one lev for one actual vote received in the last parliamentary elections?
Then it did not reach 12 thousand votes to accept the result as binding. The issues were brought to the National Assembly and eventually went to the committees.
To enforce the results of the referendum, ie. – to convene a Great National Assembly with the issues requested by Trifonov, 51% of those entitled to vote, which is a little over 3.3 million people, will have to vote. Given the low voter turnout, such a figure is unthinkable and more likely Slavi is trying to remind himself with this move.
A minimum of 400,000 real signatures are required to hold the poll. At the moment, the PP “Vazrazhdane” is trying to achieve them with the action against our possible entry into the Eurozone, but it is very, very difficult for them to provide such serious public support.
