Bulgarian Left-Wingers Bash Govt for Rewording Referendum Question

The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) has strongly criticized the ruling centrist-right GERB for its attempt to reword the question for the referendum on the fate of the Belene nuclear power plant project.

On Wednesday, GERB proposed to rephrase the question for the BSP-backed referendum, dropping the Belene project from it.

"BSP's question involves a concrete project and we every reason to believe that it is unconstitutional," key GERB MP Iskra Fidosova noted.

However, BSP lawmaker Petar Dimitrov has pointed out that the people, who are the sovereign power, "have already voiced their opinion on the issue."

Dimitrov believes that the signatures of 770 000 under his party's referendum petition "do not matter" for the ruling party.

The GERB government scrapped the Belene NPP project in March 2012, declaring it economically unfeasible.

The pro-Belene, opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, then launched a petition for a referendum on the fate of the Russian-Bulgarian project.

The inspection of the petition yielded 543 639 valid signatures, enough to make the vote irreversible.

The question of the petition was: "Should atomic energy be developed in Bulgaria through the construction of a Nuclear Plant on the Belene site?"

GERB's version of the question reads: "Should Bulgaria develop nuclear energy by building a new nuclear power plant?"

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