site.btaLaws Amended on First Reading Address Constitutional Incompatibilities with Office of Caretaker PM

Bulgaria's Parliament on Friday voted, 137-54, to adopt legislative amendments addressing a situation in which senior public officials eligible for caretaker prime minister would be unable to hold this office under the Constitution as last amended even if they take unpaid leave while serving as head of government.

The revisions to the Bulgarian National Bank Act were tabled by MPs Temenuzhka Petkova and Anna Alexandrova of GERB and Jordan Tzonev and Hamid Hamid of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF). The transitional and final provisions of the bill introduce identical amendments to the Bulgarian National Audit Office Act and the Ombudsman Act.

The recently revised Constitution empowers the President to choose a caretaker prime minister from among the National Assembly chair, the governor or one of the three deputy governors of the central bank, the president or one of the two vice presidents of the Bulgarian National Audit Office, and the ombudsman or his or her deputy.

According to Friday's amendments, if appointed caretaker prime minister, any of these officials may use unpaid leave in their pre-existing capacity for the duration of their tenure as head of government and, when they vacate this office, will serve in their previous positions for the remainder of the term for which they were elected. Before that, the three laws barred the officials in question from holding any other salaried public office except teaching.

Earlier in the day, the parliamentary Legal Affairs Committee Friday voted, 13-3 with one abstention, to approve the amendments on first reading which immediately went before the full house. The draft legislation is intended to bring the three laws into conformity with the latest revisions to the Constitution.

The legislature rushed to pass the revisions after potential appointees for caretaker prime minister, when consulted by President Rumen Radev, cited such incompatibility.

Speaking in the plenary debate, Grozdan Karadzhov MP of There Is Such a People argued that taking a leave is a right guaranteed by the Constitution and does not supersede or suspend occupation of the office concerned. "Don't hurry to adopt further violations of the Constitution," the MP urged his fellow lawmakers.

The MPs resolved that motions for revisions of the bill may be tabled within three days before its second reading.