New bid to challenge Peevski’s MP status in Constitutional Court
The Reformist Bloc, a group of seven right-wing and centrist parties that are not represented in the current Parliament, have started an attempt at a new challenge in the Constitutional Court on the issue of whether Delyan Peevski is an MP.
Representatives of the grouping handed in to the request to officials at the Presidency on October 11 and said that they would approach other state institutions.
Lacking seats in the National Assembly, the Reformist Bloc itself has no status to mount a petition in Parliament to approach the Constitutional Court.
Against the outcome of the Constitutional Court process, in which the 12 members of the court ended up deeply divided on the issue and Peevski was returned to Parliament, the Reformist Bloc said that their proposal was to cite different arguments from those put forward by opposition party GERB.
The Reformist Bloc argues that the vote in the National Assembly revoking the appointment in June of Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security was invalid. This would disqualify Peevski from sitting as an MP, under the incompatibility clause in the constitution.
The bloc also will be approaching the Speaker of the National Assembly, the Prime Minister, the Prosecutor-General and the presidents of Bulgaria’s two high courts to support the new application to the Constitutional Court.
Peevski, elected in May 2013 to a second term as an MP for the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and whose appointment as SANS head in June triggered large-scale protests demanding the resignation of the government, did not attend Parliament while the GERB application was pending in the Constitutional Court.
On the two days that Parliament sat after the outcome of the Constitutional Court process, Peevski also did not attend.
