Raya Nazaryan was elected Speaker of the 50th National Assembly after two days of debates
Raya Nazaryan from GERB-SDS was elected as the Speaker of the 50th National Assembly, after ITN decided to support her. She collected 131 "yes" votes - those of GERB-SDS, DPS and "There is such a people". 66 MPs from PP-DB, BSP, Velichie and Kaloyan Metodiev voted "against", and 39 MPs from "Vazrazhdane" abstained. The election of the first among equals was followed by thunderous applause in the hall, and the PP-DB turned to ITN with a remark - "congratulations on your success", Dir.bg reported.
At the beginning of the meeting, it seemed that there would be no elected chairman again today, but after two breaks Toshko Yordanov from ITN repeated the decision of its leader Slavi Trifonov that the party would not support the first mandate of GERB and the second of DPS and asked for the third to form a cabinet. Slavi Trifonov's deputies decided to support Nazaryan's candidacy, as well as all the others, so that the mandates can be handed over by the president.
Two breaks and a stalemate at the beginning of the plenary day
The second day of the first plenary session began with a 30-minute break at the request of the DPS. Instead of voting, MPs debated whether to re-adopt the rules for electing the Speaker of the Parliament. Silvi Kirilov from ITN, as the oldest member of parliament present, presides over the plenary session today. He proposed that the rules for electing a parliamentary leader be put to a vote, citing legal consultations held early this morning. Hamid Hamid from DPS objected that this was not necessary as the rules were already voted yesterday and asked for a 30-minute break to clarify the case.
Thus, after the first interruption, it was necessary to move on to nominations for the chairman of the legislative institution according to the procedural rules already adopted yesterday. However, Alexander Nenkov from GERB-SDS asked for an hour's break in order to continue the consultations and reach a decision, and the leader of the meeting interrupted it for another 25 minutes.
The constitution of the National Assembly
After the two breaks, the work of the deputies continued with debates on the candidacies, and only one new name was proposed - "Velichie" was nominated by Viktoria Vasileva. During the voting, she received only 13 votes "for", "against" were 105, as were the abstentions. There were no changes in the remaining candidacies - Petar Petrov from "Vazrazhdane" received 53 votes of support, 112 were against, and 71 abstained. Silvi Kirilov remained the proposal of ITN.
After the election of Raya Nazaryan from GERB-SDS as the Speaker of the 50th National Assembly, the oldest member of parliament, Silvi Kirilov, handed her over the leadership of the meeting and wished her a successful mandate and fruitful work, as well as being satisfied with the results.
After the vote, Asen Vasilev took the floor and declared that Slavi Trifonov's formation showed its true face. "Congratulations on your graduation," he said, recalling the request with which "There is such people" entered politics three years ago.
For his part, Raya Nazaryan stated: "With today's vote, it is possible for the normal development of political processes and the effective functioning of state power. The National Assembly, regardless of the degree of public trust, is the only platform for legitimizing the executive and legislative powers. That's why our common responsibility, of every single representative, is to enable the normalization of political processes and to meet society's expectations for stability, security and justice".
Nazaryan also pointed out that the deputies can count on her to be dialogical, fair, equal and unconditionally comply with the Constitution, the laws and the rules of the National Assembly.
In front of journalists, GERB leader Boyko Borisov thanked the parliamentary group of "There is such people" for their decisive support in the election of Raya Nazaryan as Speaker of the Parliament. "I thank them for taking on all the responsibility and everyone worked on them, just because they stood up for the possibility of starting the constitutional procedure," he added.
Rositsa Kirova was elected deputy speaker of the parliament from GERB-SDS, Yordan Tsonev from DPS, Atanas Atanasov from "We continue the change-Democratic Bulgaria", Tsoncho Ganev from "Vazrazhdane", Dragomir Stoynev from "BSP for Bulgaria", from "There is such people" - Andrey Chorbanov, from "Greatness" - Victoria Vasileva.
Nikolay Markov was sworn in as a deputy
An interesting moment in today's voting was that there was a lower threshold for Nazaryan's election, since Nikolay Markov from Velichie was not sworn in as a deputy yesterday and could not participate in the voting. 115 people's representatives gave support for Nazaryan a day ago, that is, today only five more votes were needed for her to be elected (with the votes of ITN, she eventually received 131 votes).
Nikolay Markov was sworn in only after the constitution of the parliament. He repeated the words: "I swear in the name of the Republic of Bulgaria to respect the Constitution and laws of the country and in all my actions to be guided by the interests of the people. I swore".