site.btaPresident, PM Trade Accusations over Election of New Prosecutor General

October 27 (BTA) - During the the local elections voting
day on Sunday President Rumen Radev and Prime Minister Boyko
Borissov traded accusations in connection with last week's
election of the new prosecutor general, Ivan Geshev.

The Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) elected sole candidate Geshev
 to become Bulgaria Prosecutor General in a 20-4 vote on
Thursday. The election followed a nine-hour hearing of the
candidate during which he had to answer over 100 questions by
professional organizations and SJC members. The hearing and
election were held on the backdrop of protests against the
single candidate and the procedure for his election, as well as
a counter-protest in his support. Only one step remains before
Geshev takes up office: President Radev has to decide whether or
 not to decree his appointment.

Approached by reporters after he cast his vote on Sunday, Radev
said that he was going to make his decision in connection with
Geshev's election "in the foreseeable future". "I will be guided
 fully by the powers conferred on me in the Constitution" Radev
said. The President went on to comment the words of Prime
Minister Borissov on October 25 that Geshev's election "will not
 be slapped on the government but on the President who is
responsible for decreeing the appointment". Radev said that this
 was Borissov's latest attempt to shift his responsibility onto
a different person. "Everybody knows very well that it is not
the President, but the SJC, who nominates and elects the
prosecutor general. It is in the SJC exactly where Borissov has
huge clout, embodied by the parliamentary quota of his
parliamentary majority," Radev said, adding that the Prime
Minister also shunned responsibility because through the Justice
 Minister he had the legal right, and also duty in Radev's
words, to put up a second candidate so as to have a genuine
competition. 

"The decree is signed by the President but the election is not
made by him, so that no one should ascribe to the President
nominations and election," Radev said.

Borissov took on Radev's words about his "huge clout" and said
that at the moment the parliamentary quota in the SJC has eleven
 persons, only three of whom are from GERB. Three other SJC
members in the parliamentary quota are from the opposition
Bulgarian Socialist Party, and two from the Movement for Rights
and Freedoms. "This is to show that the two parties who backed
Radev's election for president had five votes in the SJC whereas
 GERB had three, out of the 24 SJC members' votes," Borissov
said.

The Prime Minister stressed that "when one speaks untruths and
misleads voters on voting day, they commit a grave violation of
the law". In Borissov's view, Radev canvassed on election day,
by canvassing in favour of GERB's opponents. RY/ZH


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