Bulgarian Ruling Party Reshuffles Parliamentary Heads

Anastas Anastasov is the new Deputy Chair of the Bulgarian Parliament. Photo by BGNES

Ruling center-right party GERB has decided to appoint MP Anastas Anastasov as the new Deputy Chair of Bulgarian Parliament.

Anastasov, who is the head of Parliamentary Committee on interior and home affairs, will be replacing MP Lachezar Ivanov, who resigned last week after a scandal in which he tried to stop a TV report exposing the luxurious life of a customs agent, who is close to him.

Ivanov resigned not just as deputy head of the Parliament, but also as the Chair of the Parliamentary Committee on health. However, he has kept his MP seat.

The GERB party press center announced Tuesday night that MP Desislava Atanasova will be the new chair of the Health Committee.

The ruling party has also asked MP Svetlin Tanchev to resign as head of the Parliamentary Committee on EU Funds absorption over his proposal for a notorious “lobbyist” amendment to the Drug Substances Act. Tanchev has deposited his resigned duly. He will be replaced by MP Monika Panayotova.

Plamen Tsekov has resigned as the Deputy Chair of the Health Committee over the same problematic amendment.

Tanchev's amendment had to do with allowing a previously prohited advertising of products using images of narcotic substances.

The initial version of the Drug Substances Act was published in the State Gazette in March with the proper prohibition. Subsequently, however, a second draft of the Act was published without the ban. The investigation discoovered that Tsekov omitted the probition when reading the text of the Act as approved by the Health Committee. Unofficial information said he was asked to do that by Svetlin Tanchev.

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