Criminals As MP A Motion Agains It In Bulgaria

Well Tsetska Tsacheva the first woman Parliamentary Speaker in Bulgaria has soon got into action with her proposals for banning the immunity of MP’s from pending prosecutions from criminal activities. It remains to see whether this is just hot wind or whether there is some action is about to happen. I’m not too sure that anyone is too worried about this motion right now, as alleged criminals have been running for MPs for years, that’s a requisite for their job surely!

Bulgaria’s Parliament could abolish the immunity that MPs have from prosecution, Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva said.

Tsacheva, a member of Boiko Borissov’s GERB party, was elected Speaker at Parliament’s first sitting on July 14 2009.

Several parliaments, including the one that came to an end with the July 5 elections, have seen members vote to remove individual MPs of their immunity at the request of the Prosecutor-General’s office.

Cases where this has happened include former Sofia mayor, MP and MEP Stefan Sofiyanski and ultra-nationalist Ataka leader Volen Siderov.

In interviews with Bulgarian media, Tsacheva said that fraud cases based on serious evidence were being opened against MPs who currently had immunity.

All corruption should be investigated and one of the first steps to achieving this would be to abolish MPs’ immunity.

In any case, the immunity was merely functional and MPs were not untouchable because of the system by which it could be removed to enable a court case to go ahead.

She said that in many countries, MPs had immunity but it could be voted away.

The most recent elections in Bulgaria included controversies about people who were in the process of being prosecuted using electoral law to secure temporary immunity. However, none of these people was elected.

Source: www.sofiaecho.com