Tumult Sends Bulgarian Parliament into Forced Recess

The Bulgarian MPs got tangled in heated debates over the 2009 report of the Commission for Protection against Discrimination. Photo by BGNES

The Speaker of the Bulgarian Parliament, Tsetska Tsacheva, sent all Members of the Parliament into a forced 10-minute recess over what she called “disorder in plenary hall.”

The scandal broke after the majority rejected the report of the Commission for Protection against Discrimination (KZD) for 2009 and the MPs had to vote twice on the proposal of the far-right, nationalist Ataka party to dismantle the Commission for good.

During the first vote the proposal received 56 votes for, 38 against and 27 abstaining. After the second vote, the count was 86 for, 39 against and 5 abstaining.

Upon hearing the second result, the MP from the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and former Interior Minister, Mihail Mikov, accused his colleagues from Ataka of being xenophobes and anti-Semites upon which the latter began banging on their banks.

During the debates Ataka declared KZD a tool of the ethnic Turkish party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), and a waste of State funding, statements that met stark and heated opposition from the Socialists and the DPS MPs.

The KZD report was already rejected once last fall.

The KZD Head, Kemal Eyup, firmly denied accusations the Commission is serving only minorities in Bulgaria pointing out that 85% of the claims involve labor disputes.

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