State Gazette Blunder Still Haunts Bulgarian MPs

The GERB MP, Svetlin Tanchev, was recently involved in the scandal with the so-called State Gazette blunder. Photo by BGNES

The Members of the Bulgarian Parliament decided Wednesday to extend by a month the work of the investigative committee dealing with the so-called “State Gazette blunder.”

The committee is trying to figure out how the illegitimate amendment to the drugs law ended up being published in the State Gazette without the approval of the Parliament or the President.

The Committee’s Head, Rumen Ivanov, from the ruling Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party asked for the extension basing it on the large volume of work and the complexity of evidence collected so far along with the need to question more people.

The illegitimate amendment was published in the State Gazette edition on March 23 and actually relieved the regime for advertising agencies to use images, resembling illegal drugs.

Initially, the blunder was passed off as an involuntary mistake by the ruling GERB party, who has been accused of lobbying and forging a part of the law on drugs. Last week, however, more names emerged such as the GERB MP, Svetlin Tanchev. It became clear that Tanchev had gone to the Parliamentary Administrative Office with a piece of paper and asked them to change the text. Tanchev’s sole explanation was that one of his assistants told him there is a mistake in the text, so he asked for it to be fixed.

The Deputy Chair of the Parliamentary Health Committee, Plamen Tsvetkov, was also tangled in the scandal when the blunder was blamed on his eight-dioptric reading glasses.

The opposition supported the extension and demanded learning the real reasons for the text change.

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