site.btaVelichie Leader Mihaylov Says Parliament Illegitimate, Country Run as Mafia Dictatorship

“This National Assembly has been absolutely illegitimate from the start. We are in a mafia dictatorship that cannot survive under a market economy,” said Ivelin Mihaylov, leader of the Velichie party, on the last day of consultations with President Rumen Radev before the head of State starts the procedure of handing cabinet-forming mandates to parliamentary forces.

Mihaylov was joined by Velichie MPs Yuliana Mateeva and Pavlin Petrov.

“We may be a small parliamentary group, the smallest in this National Assembly, but that makes us the most active. Our position is the strongest, as we sit at the top in the Parliament and see everything that happens,” Mihaylov said. He added that his party is provocative in Parliament in order to observe how the authorities will respond. Mihaylov emphasized that they are not career politicians but ordinary citizens who see that the environment is unsuitable for living and decided to intervene.

Mihaylov stated that the legislature has been illegitimate from the start because the Constitutional Court found manipulations in 47% of the voting sections reviewed in the last elections. “We reviewed six thousand sections through video materials,” he said, adding that they found “50% brutal violations.” The Velichie leader noted that this video surveillance should serve as evidence when someone is held criminally responsible.

He also claimed that in the last elections his party’s votes were entirely replaced in entire municipalities. Moreover, he said there is a “second filter” in Parliament, altering the positions of already seated parliamentary groups. Mihaylov reported witnessing “extreme pressure, blackmail, use of the State Agency for National Security, the Anti-Corruption Commission, other institutions, including media, to crush inconvenient members and produce a parliament with only a nominal opposition.” He said he himself was threatened, offered various incentives, and told that his people would be arrested and he personally would be attacked if he did not change his political allegiance.

According to Mihaylov, both the elections and the post-election process are problematic because if this lawlessness continues, Bulgaria is not living in a democracy, not socialism, but in a mafia dictatorship that cannot endure under a market economy. “This National Assembly cannot carry out governing functions that would even minimally improve people’s lives,” Mihaylov concluded.