Nadezhda Yordanova becomes a hostage of her puppet masters behind the scenes
False start of the third season of the soap opera about the removal of Ivan Geshev
The Supreme Judicial Council returned to the Correctional Minister of Justice Nadezhda Yordanova on her request to remove Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev. The staff will still write rules, according to which they will consider the essence of the proposal submitted by Yordanova, which turned out to be full of technical errors.
The decision of the council was taken after a one-hour sluggish debate of the personnel body. Nadezhda Yordanova herself came with a wide smile, but left stumbling. This would not have happened if the Minister of Justice had proposed a month ago that the SJC adopt rules on how to proceed with a proposal for early termination of the mandate of one of the three first in the judiciary – the SCC chairmen, SAC and the Prosecutor General. .
The session of the Plenum of the SJC showed that the third season of the soap opera about the removal of Ivan Geshev, organized mainly by “Democratic Bulgaria”, is increasingly banal and boring. Even the professional protester – Georgi Georgiev from “BOEC”, reduced the duration of his duty before the Judicial Council, and instead of 09.30 blossomed with only five more on the street “Ekzarh Yosif” after 10.30, when the meeting of the staffing was just coming to an end.
In fact, the Minister of Justice should not be angry with the staff, because to a large extent, they saved her an even bigger exposure than the one witnessed by the SJC meeting. Yordanova read a diligently pre-written exposition, which, however, did nothing to contribute to the looming total insolvency of her long-prepared request to remove Geshev.
The Minister of Justice announced that the Prosecutor General had behaved arrogantly because he allowed himself to comment in advance on her allegations that he had committed violations. He had statutory powers to send magistrates, which, according to Yordanova, should also be used as a basis for the removal of a prosecutor №1. In an interview, Geshev spoke with a negative connotation regarding the legal profession, which was a great sin, no matter that under the road and over the road, and even in courtrooms, lawyers regularly allow themselves to insult prosecutors. Nadezhda Yordanova managed to capture one, but she cannot see the other.
The icing on the cake was quoted by Yordanova as a sociological poll that gave only 8% confidence in the prosecution, which was also a reason for Geshev to leave. This is perhaps the clearest example of the total helplessness of the Minister of Justice to justify his political demand for another attack on Ivan Geshev – season 3.
The previous two seasons seemed to be more original. The first was while Ivan Geshev was only a candidate for chief prosecutor. At that time, Hristo Ivanov at least managed to gather several dozen protesters in front of the SJC. Today, however, these protesters are no more, because they are in the cabinets of ministries, in parliament, ie. part of the power.
The second season of the war against Geshev was in 2020, when protests were again staged against the prosecutor’s office against influential economic figures. Now in the midst of the third season, it is clear that the energy of the enemies of the Attorney General seems to be running out, busy with the absorption of power assets and the struggle for supremacy in the four-party coalition.
Probably even Nadezhda Yordanova is already beginning to feel that she is becoming a hostage of her behind-the-scenes puppet masters. The brief SJC Plenum, where the only thing that made sense was making decisions in support of Ukrainian refugees, was that Yordanova was more of a member of the Electronic Media Council or a censor, but certainly not a justice minister. There is no other way, since Nadezhda Yordanova wants to remove Ivan Geshev, because he had allowed himself to send works by Yordan Yovkov and Ivan Vazov to non-governmental organizations. Yordanova remained speechless when one of her staff drew attention to gross technical errors in her proposal for the early release of the chief prosecutor. In one place the Supreme Judicial Court was recorded, and in another there was a quote from a legal provision, but without specifying the specific normative act.
Indicative of the tension that Yordanova is experiencing from carrying out the political order – to lead the war against the Prosecutor General from the front line, was the fact that neither during the meeting nor in front of the journalists Yordanova managed to explain the revelation of “Trud” that convened the Plenum of the SJC with the same form with which its official predecessor Yanaki Stoilov asked the staff to dismiss Geshev on the denunciations of the Minister of Interior Boyko Rashkov.
Nadezhda Yordanov already knows that there will be an even bigger failure in a few weeks, when the SJC will start considering the essence of what is stated in the 24 pages. And obviously the Attorney General not only has nothing to lose, but he is now rightly aware that the constant attacks of the political authorities against him and the prosecution as a whole, although it sounds paradoxical, work in his favor. That is why Geshev is right when he announced that he expects the third, fourth and nth proposals for early termination of his term. If everyone is going to be like that, prosecutor №1 not only has nothing to fear, but on the contrary – it is becoming more and more certain that his horizon will remain at the head of the state prosecution for the next five years.
This is not the case with Yordanova and her team at the Ministry of Justice (MoJ). In three months, this institution did two things – to submit the legally unfounded request commented here and to edit long-prepared texts for the repair of the judicial law, providing for the abolition of special justice, both written in the same well-known law firm. Apart from the interests of behind-the-scenes lobbyists and oligarchs, the MoJ apparently has no intention of engaging in tasks that will improve citizens’ access to justice. It is time for the Ministry of Justice to understand that the state and Europe are facing the greatest challenge of our time. If they do not do it as a matter of urgency, Ivan Geshev will be right about one more thing – he will soon have to meet the next Minister of Justice, and probably the new Prime Minister.
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