Peeved Peevski tells Constitutional Court: ‘I have been demonised’
Delyan Peevski, the controversial figure whose abortive appointment as head of the State Agency for National Security lent massive impetus to public protests against the Bulgarian Socialist Party government, has told the Constitutional Court that he will not attend an October 8 hearing to which he was invited to argue that he remained an MP.
Peevski, who was a member of the 42nd National Assembly for the Movement for Rights and Freedoms when he was elected by the votes of the BSP and the MRF to head the national security agency, portrayed himself in a letter to the court as a victim of media, political and business circles.
Linked to a family with extensive media ownerships in Bulgaria, Peevski is now the subject of a case in the Constitutional Court as to whether he is an MP in spite of his election as head of the State Agency for National Security.
Since the controversy around his appointment, he has not been attending sittings of Parliament.
While his appointment to the agency was reversed, anti-government protesters continue to demand to know precisely who it was who nominated Peevski to head the agency.
Formally, the announcement of his nomination was made in Parliament by Plamen Oresharski, occupant of the prime minister’s chair in the BSP cabinet, and it has been reported that the BSP parliamentary group was told that failure to back Peevski’s nomination would mean the downfall of the current government.
He said in his letter to the Constitutional Court, as reported by local television bTV, that the opportunity to appear before the court on October 8 had been given to him in spite of “pressure” exerted on the court by “some media close to certain political and business circles” that it was an open-and-shut case that Peevski was not an MP.
The pressure, the letter reportedly said, was exerted with the “tacit approval” of institutions such as the President and political parties such as GERB.
The MRF says that Peevski did not really enter the State Agency for National Security, did not act as the head of the agency and therefore there were no obstacles to him being an MP.
Media reports said, however, that Peevski had taken the oath as head of the agency in front of members of Parliament at the sitting of the House where he was elected, had given an interview in his capacity as head of the agency and had held a meeting with the Prosecutor-General, Sotir Tsatsarov, in his capacity as head of the agency, as well as with heads of department at SANS.
Peevski also took issue with the procedure in the court case and alleged that the rapporteur in the case was biased.
He said that he had signed no SANS documents, had issued no orders and dealt with no cases.
Peevski said that he had “no other way” to protest against the violation of his rights but to refuse to participate in a hearing that for some of the judges would not matter because they had already made up their minds.
“I would not want my presence to legitimize the idea that my participation is a formality devoid of legal value,” said Peevski, adding that he hoped that even though he had been “demonized” by the media and some politicians, the Constitutional Court would not allow political arguments to outweigh legal ones.
