site.btaParliament Elects Council for Electronic Media Member

July 17 (BTA) - Parliament elected GERB's nominee Galina
Georgieva member of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) by a
vote of 97-57, with 24 abstentions. She is replacing Ivo
Atanassov, who was elected in 2013 as the nominee of the
Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). His term expired on Wednesday.

The BSP's nominee Iya Petkova garnered a vote of 84 in favour
and 19 against, with 82 abstentions.

Socialist MP Alexander Simov said in plenary that "censorship
triumphed again". He told reporters later on that "[publisher
and MP of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms] Delyan Peevski
took over CEM, too", and called Georgieva "a convenient puppet
who will do as she is bid".

Reacting to Simov's criticisms, Vezhdi Rashidov, Chairman of the
 Culture and Media Committee, told reporters: "This manner of
speaking is neither good nor constructive."

Velislava Krusteva MP of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms
(MRF) also lashed at Simov. She described as "an act of utter
political helplessness" the BSP's position linking the election
of a CEM member to Delyan Peevski. Krusteva added that the BSP
"tend to shift the blame to the MRF when their politics fail".
RY/DD