President Rumen Radev defined the draft constitutional amendments as “legally ignorant” and “politically flawed” after his participation in the Bulgarian Automotive Industry Meets Executive Power 2023 forum in Sofia, the President's Press Secretariat said here Wednesday.
"This is evident both to constitutionalists and citizens. After a very long warming up of the public about upcoming miraculous changes in the justice system, about an upcoming justice reform, our society was expecting to see working solutions," Radev noted.
Radev was commenting on the draft constitutional changes that Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), together with the "Justice for Everyone" initiative, presented to the media on July 23. One of the proposed amendments is that May 24, the Day of the Holy Brothers Cyril and Methodius, the Bulgarian Alphabet, Education and Culture and of Slav Letters, be made a national holiday and renamed "Day of Bulgarian Word, Education and Culture, and of the Cyrillic Alphabet".
The head of State described “the attempt to erase March 3 from the national calendar” by designating May 24 as the national holiday as “an assault on history”. “[It is an assault] against the ideals of the Bulgarian revivalists, against the memory of the thousands of our and foreign soldiers who died for our freedom. I am categorically against such experiments," Radev stressed.
“When you do not have working solutions for the present and the future, you start a war with the past," the President added.
According to him, a referendum on the issue would further divide Bulgarian society. "We all know May 24 is a wonderful holiday, it is the most sacred for all of us, but what they are offering us is an unacceptable division and an absurd situation - to choose for and against our language and our freedom - there is no solution to such a dilemma," Radev argued.
Radev added that the draft amendments are proposing "national division, attack on local authorities and the presidential institution and disenfranchisement" instead of a reform in the judiciary. "Also a violation of fundamental principles of balance of powers. In my view, it is an open bid to take over the judiciary," he pointed out.
"The maxim that the lower the legitimacy of a government, the more it seeks to consolidate its power through administrative and forceful measures is clearly confirmed,” Radev stated.
“As far as caretaker governments are concerned: apparently the government sees them as a threat – not of the usurpation of some imaginary power, that cannot happen. Nor is it of the long life of the last caretaker government, because they had the option of ending it at any moment. They had the option of not having a caretaker government at all. Clearly, the threat is in the realisation of the contrast, especially between the last caretaker government and the last regular governments. While the regular governments created crises, the caretaker government solved them. While the regular governments, especially the last one, demonstrated managerial weakness and disintegration due to insurmountable internal political contradictions, the caretaker government demonstrated consolidation and determination, and was working for the people. While they stood with Russian intermediaries for more expensive gas, inability to complete the interconnector with Greece, the caretaker government resolved all these issues very quickly," the head of state argued.
According to Radev, it also credited the caretaker government for the fact that Lukoil was registered in Bulgaria, as well as for the many draft laws that were prepared.
"Any change in the laws that is made for an individual is the wrong approach and it backfires on those who make it. For the moment I can find no other explanation. Perhaps the government was annoyed by a poll from Gallup International that came out in the last few days that very quickly disappeared from the public attention. Despite governing in the worst crises, for ten months the caretaker government came out with a very high rating - much higher than that of the current regular government, which is at the beginning of its mandate," Radev further said.
/MY/
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