site.btaKornelia Ninova Reiterates BSP's Four Conditions for Returning to Parliament

117 POLITICS - VIDIN - KORNELIA NINOVA - VISIT amplified

Kornelia Ninova Reiterates
BSP's Four Conditions for
Returning to Parliament


Vidin, Northwestern Bulgaria, February 21 (BTA) - The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) will not return to Parliament unless their four conditions are accepted, BSP leader Kornelia Ninova said as she attended a working meeting of the National Association of Mayoralty Mayors in Vidin on Thursday. "BSP's decision to leave Parliament was prompted by violations of this country's laws and political and human rights, such as the right to preference voting and the election of a new Central Election Commission
(CEC)," Ninova added.

The BSP top leadership decided last Sunday to leave Parliament and said it would return on four conditions: electing a new CEC, repealing controversial Election Code amendments adopted shortly before that to change the rules for preference voting, among other things, restarting the debate on machine voting and reintroducing the right of Bulgarian citizens to petition the Supreme Administrative Court with a cassation appeal. BSP have so far refused to return to Parliament, despite the fact that on Monday GERB agreed to reinstate the former preference voting rules and to elect a new CEC.

BSP will also insist on addressing the issue of financing small settlements, said Ninova. "Millions are distributed by decrees of the Council of Ministers, which is not a standard budget procedure, and essentially is the decision of PM Boyko Borissov," pointed out the BSP leader. "That way all taxpayer money ends up financing GERB and MRF municipalities. In 2018, 88 municipalities with a population of 1,300,000 were left without financing. It is a messed up model that goes down to the municipal level, as municipal mayors don't finance small settlements either."

Later in the day Ninova sent a letter to Parliament Chair Tsveta Karayancheva telling her that the Socialist MPs are not going to draw travel allowances or use official cars for their trips to their constituencies. Nor will they be paid wages for the time during which they don't attend Parliament's sittings.

Furthermore, Ninova asked Karayancheva to make sure Parliament consider a motion by a group of Socialist MPs for reducing and freezing the monthly pay of deputies, which has been in the freezer for no obvious reason for three months now. Ninova argues that it is inadmissible to raise MPs' wages every three months in the conditions of growing poverty and inequality. RY/DT/LY/LN/
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