“With the line “leave immediately” 1 year ago, a DANS inspection of drug warehouses was thwarted on serious suspicions of a scheme to drain serious funds, including from the Health Fund budget. Today we requested a hearing on this topic and the rulers from “Progressive Bulgaria” rejected it”, the co-chairman of “Yes, Bulgaria” Bozhidar Bozhanov told journalists on the sidelines of the parliament.
He announced that “Democratic Bulgaria” would request such a hearing in a parliamentary committee, after the chairman of the parliamentary group of “Progressive Bulgaria” Petar Vitanov stated from the parliamentary rostrum that the place for such a hearing is not the plenary hall, but a parliamentary committee. He specified that the former DANS employee Yasen Tokuschiev, who headed a unit in the service working in the healthcare sector, who made serious revelations in an interview for “Off Air” with Maria Tsantsarova, will also be invited to the meeting of the committee for control over the security services.
Bozhanov asked the ruling party why they fall into the trap of rejecting such hearings in the hall. He compared the “Leave immediately” scandal to the “Colleagues, go home” scandal more than a year ago, when the heads of DANS employees in Plovdiv recalled them from an operation to break up a depot for smuggled cigarettes. “Here we have a second episode, and the new ruling party is quite timid about breaking up such schemes. Our expectation is that they will be much more active and aggressive in breaking the corruption model, and not with procedural tricks to shift the topics further in time. We also expect SANS to send all documents related to the former deputy governor of the NHIF Momchil Mavrov, and by coincidence also to the new deputy governor Asen Medzhidiev, to the secret registry of the National Assembly, so that we can all get acquainted with the details of what schemes he potentially participated in. All that we see, unfortunately, is an attempt to whitewash the facade, not a fight against the model, not a demolition of schemes, but a slight repainting. Our job as the opposition is to put a stop to these things”, said Bozanov.
On the occasion of the discussions that have begun in parliament on changes to the Electoral Code, the chairwoman of the parliamentary group of the Democratic Bulgaria Nadezhda Yordanova stated that the ruling party practically supports two key causes of “Democratic Bulgaria” - 100% machine voting as a guarantee for fair elections and to abolish the restriction on the number of sections outside the EU. Democratic Bulgaria is against the ruling party's proposal to abolish the electoral district “Abroad”. Yordanova reminded that the proposals of the Democratic Party for amendments to the Electoral Code regarding machine voting and the abolition of restrictions on sections abroad were submitted in the first days of the new parliament.
The Democratic Party will insist that between the first and second reading of the changes there be a discussion with stakeholders on ideas for strengthening control over the disclosure of data from sociological surveys on election day. “Two theses are clashing in society - for a complete ban on publishing sociological data so that it does not influence the vote, and on the other hand - such data is published anyway, at least the one who provides it should be held responsible. So this decision should be made after a debate”, said Yordanova.
In response to a journalistic question, she replied that the State Security Service is against the investigative functions of the anti-corruption body, which is why she did not propose a member of the new commission.