Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) urged Parliament Chair Rosen Zhelyazkov not to allow an extraordinary sitting of the legislature ahead the local elections on Sunday. They held a news conference to make public their position.
Parliament took a break for a week before the elections to keep its debating chamber free of campaign rhetoric - and has done so successfully for four days now. That, however, is about to change after Movement for Rights and Freedoms co-floor leader Delyan Peevski said on Monday that Parliament would be holding an extraordinary sitting on October 27 to try to override a presidential veto on revisions to the Energy Act, that pave the way for the next steps to full energy market liberalization.
CC-DB co-floor leader Atanas Atanassov said at the Tuesday news conference that the idea for Parliament to take a break before the elections was GERB leader Boyko Borissov's. "We found his argument that Parliament's rostrum should not be used for campaigning to be very reasonable. A motion was submitted yesterday [Monday] that an extraordinary sitting be held Friday, the last day of the election campaign. We are against that for the exact same argument: that Parliament's rostrum should not be used for campaigning," he said. He added that the debate on the presidential veto can easily be held after the elections.
CC-DB co-floor leader Kiril Petkov said that energy issues are being used heavily in the campaign. "If a sitting is held on Friday, it will be mere populism without any of the decisions needed by Bulgarians and the Bulgarian energy sector," said Petkov.
That differs from what Petkov said a day earlier, when he pointed to the importance of overriding the veto as soon as possible because the second payment under the Recovery and Resilience Plan is contingent on that law. "As long as the veto stands, the whole process is delayed and there is a risk of the second payment not being remitted until the end of the year," he explained. "That is why we will present ourselves together on Friday to override the veto as soon as possible, to try to reduce the delay, so that the money would reach the Bulgarian budget promptly," Petkov said.
At the Tuesday news conference, Ivaylo Mirchev MP (CC-DB) commented that "those who played cards with the Lukoil bosses until recently, have turned into the biggest fighters against Russian influences in Bulgaria". He was likely referring to GERB leader Boyko Borissov, who is widely known to have have had a long acquaintance with former Lukoil Executive Director Valentin Zlatev and that the two used to play cards together. The second part of Mirchev's remark referred to GERB's efforts to end the soonest possible Lukoil Neftochim's exemption from the EU ban on use of Russian oil.
On October 20, GERB announced it would move a draft resolution in Parliament next week, giving the Government one week to withdraw the exemption for the Lukoil refinery in Burgas. CC-DB opposed the move, arguing that it would result in a fuel price spike on the local market.
Mirchev said Tuesday: "We support the proposals: those for fuel storage, for the profits and taxes that Lukoil owes the public purse. We support the proposals concerning the warehouses, the special commercial manager, which was our proposal, but we believe that this should be done by the experts of the Council of Ministers, not in seven days, as some imagine it should be done, at the risk of causing a fuel crisis in the country."
/NZ/
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