Bulgaria Constitutional Court Replaces 2 Members of Parliament

Ventsislav Varbanov (right) has vowed to take the case to Strasbourg if he has to in order to keep his MP seat. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court has ruled that two of the present Members of Parliament have been elected unlawfully, and that they should be replaced by the next on respective proportional party tickets.

The Court ruled that MP Byurhan Abazov from the ethnic Turkish Movements for Rights and Freedoms party (DPS) elected from the Ruse Electoral District, and Ventsislav Varbanov from the Blue Coalition elected from the Dobrich Electoral District have to vacate their seats because of 24 votes that have been miscounted in the city of Ruse during the July 2009 Parliamentary Elections.

The Court assigned the Central Electoral Commission the task to readjust the mandates, which means that the Blue Coalition are supposed to get one more MP from Ruse, and the DPS party is supposed to get one more MP from Dobrich.

Thus, the actual number of MPs the two formations have (15 for the Blue Coalition and 38 for the DPS) will not be changed. The new DPS MP will be Rushen Riza, and the new Blue Coalition MP will be Mihail Mihaylov.

The Constitutional Court has found that one of the electoral sections in Ruse by mistake counted 24 votes submitted for the Blue Coalition as though they were submitted for another party.

The MPs who are to lose their seats, Ventsislav Varbanov, and Byurhan Abazov, have launched their own investigation, and claim that another 142 votes which were miscounted as submitted for the Blue Coalition but in fact were not. Those votes would neutralize the 24 the Court took into account, and would preserve their seats.

The two MPs have expressed their surprise and dissatisfaction with the fact that the Court had not considered their claims, and had not allowed them to become a side in the case.

Varbanov has vowed to appeal the ruling and to take the case to the European Court in Strasbourg if needed.

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