site.btaPeevski and Karadayi Give Up European Parliament Seats

May 29 (BTA) - Controversial politician and businessman
Delyan Peevski is giving up his seat in the new European
Parliament, which he won as a candidate of the Movement for
Rights and Freedoms (MRF) in Sunday's European elections, MRF
leader Mustafa Karadayi told journalists in the National
Assembly lobby on Wednesday, speaking in Peevski's presence.

Karadayi confirmed his earlier statement that he himself will
not take up his European Parliament seat either. He and Peevski
were, respectively, first and second on the MRF list of
candidates for the European elections. After their withdrawal,
the MRF will be represented in the new European Parliament by
Ilhan Kyuchouk, Iskra Mihailova and Atidje Alieva-Veli, said
Karadayi.

Explaining his decision, Peevski said the prevailing view in the
 MRF is that he will be more useful in Bulgaria than outside the
 country. Peevski noted that he and Karadayi received the
largest numbers of voter preferences among all MRF candidates in
 the European elections. He added that the ALDE group in the
European Parliament, of which the MRF is a member, has never
objected to his running in European elections.

Peevski is perhaps the most controversial figure in Bulgarian
politics. He controls a significant number of news media in the
country and has been named by Reporters Without Borders as one
of the main reasons for the poor media freedom situation in
Bulgaria. Peevski is a member of Bulgaria's National Assembly
(Parliament), but very rarely appears in it. His appointment as
head of the State Agency for National Security in June 2013
(subsequently retracted) sparked massive anti-government
protests which went on for more than a year to lead Prime
Minister Plamen Oresharski's government to fall.

This is the second time that Peevski is not taking up the MEP
seat to which he has been elected. He did the same after the
2014 European elections.

At Wednesday's news briefing, Peevski was asked by a journalist
why he has come to the National Assembly this time and whether
he will participate in the plenary sittings more often than
before. He responded by saying that he has come to work, as he
is an elected MP, and when he is not in the legislature, he
tours the country, which is also part of his job.

Karadayi said that at these latest European elections the MRF
achieved its goal of overcoming the damage it sustained at the
Bulgarian parliamentary elections in 2017 and uniting its
traditional supporters. "These elections showed that the
artificially engineered alternatives to the MRF cannot even
survive their first elections," he said, referring to Lyutvi
Mestan's DOST party which was set up by MRF defectors.

Another achievement, according to Karadayi, is that the MRF is
the only political force which has improved its election
performance compared with the parliamentary ballot two years
ago.

Peevski described the MRF's result in the European elections as
"very good." RY/VE