Bulgaria President Sends Recording to Parliament, No Word on Permission

Bulgaria's parliamentary Speaker, Tsetska Tsacheva, says a copy of the Presidential transcript of a recent meeting has been sent to the National Assembly, with no assurance that the recording had been approved by Deputy PM Djankov. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's Speaker of Parliament, Tsetska Tsacheva, has received a certified copy of the text of the recent meeting between the President and the Deputy Prime Minister.

Tsacehva announced on Monday that the President's office had sent an official certified true copy of the text of the conversation and sound recording of the meeting held on March 5.

She also stated that there was no information as to whether the audiotape of the meeting had been made with the consent of Simeon Djankov, the Deputy PM.

"In the documents sent by the presidential institution, there are no answers to questions put by the Chair of the Bulgarian Parliament, whether the president had the prior consent of Minister Djankov to disseminate the contents of the conversation held between them," the parliamentary press center stated.

The audio recording and the shorthand transcript have been deposited in the library of the National Assembly, where lawmakers can gain access to them.

Speaker Tsacheva had demanded on Saturday that the President send to Parliament a full record of the meeting, and had specifically asked for an assurance that the recording had been made with the consent of Djankov.

Under Bulgarian law, it is illegal to make or publish a recording without the consent of the citizen in question.

The meeting, which was supposed to resolve differences between the Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister, Simeon Djankov, and President Georgi Parvanov, was deemed "futile" by the latter, while the former had not apologized for the remarks he had made on a TV show about the President.

The presidential office had then published a transcript of the meeting on the President's web site, provoking widespread controversy in political circles over the weekend, with some parties calling for the President to be impeached, while others found nothing improper or illegal had been done.

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