site.btaCC-DB Moves for Stripping Four Vazrazhdane MPs of Immunity

The Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) parliamentary group on Wednesday moved for lifting the immunity of four MPs of Vazrazhdane so that they can be prosecuted for hooliganism, MP Yavor Bozhankov (CC-DB) said in the legislature’s debating chamber. The motion follows a February request by acting Prosecutor General Borislav Sarafov to strip the four MPs of immunity, which remains unfulfilled to this day.

The said acts of hooliganism were allegedly committed on February 22, when Vazrazhdane led a protest against the planned euro changeover in Bulgaria. Protesters vandalized the exterior of the Sofia office of the European Commission.

Presenting the chief prosecutor’s reasoning for the immunity waiver request, Bozhankov said that during the anti-euro protest one of the four MPs of Vazrazhdane threw a Molotov cocktail which could potentially disfigure a police officer and endangered the health of many citizens. Another one splashed paint, the third one hit a police officer, and the fourth one, flourishing his MP card, shouted obscenities at law enforcers.

Bozhankov asked National Assembly Chair Nataliya Kiselova how she can explain to her law students “that there are people above the law who breach public order violently and cynically” and get away with it.

Kiselova answered by saying that the National Assembly leader is supposed to proceed with such a motion only when the Assembly does not sit, and by submitting the CC-DB proposal Bozhankov acted according to the rule. The rule is that, when the Assembly sits, it is the job of the Assembly, and not its leader, to handle an immunity waiver request from the chief prosecutor.