site.btaGERB Wants Establishment of Ad Hoc Committee in Connection to Parliament's Decision to Finance Armed Forces' Rearmament

GERB Wants Establishment of Ad Hoc Committee in Connection to Parliament's Decision to Finance Armed Forces' Rearmament

Sofia, June 25 (BTA) - GERB demanded the establishment of an ad hoc committee for everything connected to Parliament's decision to provide financial resources for the Bulgarian Army's rearmament, said here at a news conference on Sunday GERB Floor Leader Tsvetan Tsvetanov.

Last June the National Assembly approved a project for investing in "the acquisition of a new-type fighter aircraft" and "the acquisition of a multipurpose module patrol ship for the Navy", while this April caretaker defence minister and deputy PM Stefan Yanev said a working group had concluded that a Swedish company would be the best pick for the purchase of fighters for the Bulgarian Air Force. However, caretaker prime minister Ognyan Gerdjikov told reporters that nothing about the deal had been predetermined. Yanev said that the next cabinet would have the final say, choosing between offers from Sweden, Portugal and Italy. An investment project envisages the acquisition of eight fighters for 1.5 billion leva.

The Chair of the Parliamentary Defence Committee, Konstantin Popov, noted on Sunday that the process of acquiring a new-type fighter aircraft is at a very advanced stage now. The National Assembly, which voted this budget, must be clear about what this money will be spent on, and that is why the ad hoc committee must acquaint itself with the facts and results of these activities, Popov added. According to him, otherwise the National Assembly risks being accused in staying distant from these processes.

"We have enough suspicions that President Radev had backed the purchase of Swedish fighter aircraft and that this happened at a time when the caretaker government had not yet made a final decision," Tsvetanov said. "We want to check, using parliamentary mechanisms, the conversations which will be held with all participants in this process about how this decision was reached, and whether they have received information which had disqualified one of the participants by default," he said.
Tsvetanov voiced his belief that they will have the full cooperation from all participants in the process. "We will not let national interests and this country's security be at stake. We are in favour of transparency and will be uncompromising in the fight against corruption, regardless of the responsible state position taken by politicians," he said.

"We disagree with the statements about a lack of political will to fight high-level corruption, which were circulated recently by the President and the Bulgarian Socialist Party's Chair," said the Chair of Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee, Danail Kirilov. He noted that when the anti-corruption law was discussed last December, GERB and the Reformist Bloc were blocked by all remaining parliamentary groups, which prevented them from completing the anti-corruption legislation. "Already back then, we presented our idea for a single anti-corruption body and explained that it must be based on the foundations of the Commission for Illegal Assets Forfeiture, Kirilov said. He added that GERB have continued working on this during the election campaign, which also became one of the focal points in their governance programme.