site.btaSixth Protest Rally Held against Borislav Sarafov’s Likely Election as Prosecutor General

A sixth protest rally against the expected election of acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov to hold the post on a permanent basis was staged in front of the Palace of Justice in Sofia on Wednesday evening. The demonstration was organized by the Justice for All Initiative (JAI).

“Our goal is to use all methods allowed by democracy to keep Sarafov from being elected as prosecutor general,” the JAI leader, lawyer Velislav Velichkov, said during the event.

Approached by BTA, Velichkov said: “We want to end the flawed procedure for the prosecutor general’s election by a Supreme Judicial Council [SJC] whose tenure expired two years ago. This is a travesty of law, an affront to the Constitution. We also want Georgi Cholakov to be removed from the position of acting President of the Supreme Administrative Court.”

According to Velichkov, the National Assembly should amend the Judicial Power Act. “The procedure for electing a prosecutor general must be halted, an election to the parliamentary quota in the SJC must be launched immediately, a double-majority voting rule should be established, and only after a new SJC is elected, the procedure [for the prosecutor general] should start all over again with more than one candidate to the post.”

Commenting on the nine unsuccessful attempts to elect a chairperson of the new National Assembly, the lawyer described the crisis as political and constitutional. “Those who are failing to elect a National Assembly chairperson are committing a crime against parliamentary democracy, because they have left a parliamentary republic without a functioning parliament for three weeks,” he said. He noted that this works well for Delyan Peevski, who heads the Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning, and Boyko Borissov, leader of GERB.

The JAI is in favour of Nataliya Kiselova (BSP-United Left) heading the National Assembly because of her professionalism and expertise. Earlier on Wednesday, Kiselova reached a run-off vote for Assembly chair, in which her opponent was Silvi Kirilov (There Is Such a People), who leads the Assembly on an interim basis by virtue of being the oldest MP.

The protest rally was guarded by uniformed police.