site.btaBSP Calls on Its MPs to Support Presidential Veto on Election Code

The Executive Bureau of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) has called on MPs from the BSP-United Left parliamentary group to support President Iliana Iotova’s veto on the Election Code by refusing to re-adopt the contested amendments. The appeal was made by BSP Chair Krum Zarkov on Tuesday at a press conference following the first meeting of the party’s newly elected leadership.

Zarkov said that BSP-United Left has so far failed to reach a unified position on the veto of the Election Code amendments and the proposed restriction on the number of polling stations abroad. As a result, the BSP Executive Bureau was compelled to take a political decision on the matter, he explained.

He stressed that a presidential veto can be overridden only with votes in favour, meaning that any vote against re-adopting the law, as well as any abstention, effectively supports the president’s veto.

According to Zarkov, parliamentary arithmetic shows that the parties backing the restriction on polling stations abroad command a total of 115 MPs. Six additional votes are needed to override the veto, and it is a matter of party conscience that these should not come from BSP’s ranks, he argued. Otherwise, this would seriously undermine the party’s principled stance on citizens’ political rights, as well as its support for President Iotova, whose first act in office, the veto itself, could be overturned. Zarkov expressed confidence that MPs from BSP-United Left understand the stakes and will not allow this to happen with their votes.

Earlier on Tuesday, the parliamentary Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee voted, 11-8 with one abstention, to reject the presidential veto. One MP on the committee voted in favour of the veto and one voted against, and it remains to be seen how the Socialist-led coalition will vote in the plenary.  The veto will now be debated by the full house, where the minimum number of votes required to override it is 50 per cent plus one of all 240 lawmakers, i.e. 121.