site.btaVazrazhdane MP Spends 30 Minutes Reading Polling Stations from Turkiye after Assen Vassilev’s Remarks

During Thursday’s parliamentary sitting, MP Georgi Hrisimirov of Vazrazhdane spent around half an hour listing polling stations in Turkiye where, according to him, Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), MECh, Velichie and what he called “the Turkish parties” want to preserve the votes for Turkish parties.

Earlier in the day, Assen Vassilev of CC-DB had spent one hour and 20 minutes reading out, polling station by polling station, how many Bulgarian citizens in the United Kingdom would be deprived of their right to vote if the amendments to the Electoral Code tabled by Vazrazhdane were adopted. The proposed changes provide that in countries outside the European Union no more than 20 polling stations may be opened outside Bulgarian diplomatic and consular missions.

“Unlike the votes read out by Assen Vassilev in the UK and the US, which are distributed more or less evenly among five or six parties, I am reading only the votes for the Turkish parties, because they account for 90% of voters,” Hrisimirov said. “From Turkiye, between four and nine MPs are sent to the Bulgarian parliament. We cannot allow that,” the Vazrazhdane MP added.

“What you tried to do from this rostrum was to divide Bulgarian citizens on an ethnic basis and according to where they live,” Vassilev commented. “We are not dividing them,” he added.

Independent MP Myumyun Myumyun asked which Turkish parties were being referred to and noted that he was a member of a Bulgarian party. “The [Movement for Rights and Freedoms] MRF is the party that represents all these people. As for the internal party issue – Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF) and MRF – we will resolve it ourselves,” he added.

Taner Ali (Alliance for Rights and Freedoms) said that Hrisimirov had violated the Bulgarian Constitution by claiming that there were Turkish parties in Bulgaria. Under the Constitution, there are only Bulgarian parties in the country, he stressed. “Let us not divide ourselves into Turkish and Russian parties, because we know what kind of party you are,” Ali added.