The Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee of the Parliament rejected with 11 votes “abstain”, three against and three in favor of including the bill submitted by Delyan Peevski and a group of MPs to close the Anti-Corruption Commission. The item was proposed by MP Hamid Hamid from DPS-New Beginning, BTA reports.
The use of the Anti-Corruption Commission as political chewing gum and as an excuse for all kinds of politicians should be stopped, Hamid said.
The Chair of the Legal Committee Anna Alexandrova from GERB-SDF commented that the bill had just been submitted to the committee and no requests for opinions from interested parties had yet been sent. She added that the bill was extremely important and related to the Recovery and Resilience Plan.
Hamid Hamid requested a re-vote, noting that the bill was extremely short and essentially had a single paragraph, stating that the Anti-Corruption Commission was being closed and the Anti-Corruption Act was being repealed.
„De facto we are talking about one paragraph, I do not understand what opinions we should seek, whether to close it or not. There has been a discussion for almost a week, everyone has expressed their opinion on the study, etc., everyone is commenting on this – the Anti-Corruption Commission should be closed sooner rather than later. I do not understand this hypocrisy, when everyone says – this commission is a bluff, it should be closed, and now suddenly everyone does not want the item to be on the agenda“, said Hamid.
Nadezhda Yordanova from the PP-DB pointed out that the anti-corruption commission acts as a “bluff“, but the members of parliament must make responsible legislative decisions. „I am worried that this haste is actually aimed at extinguishing, stopping the debate, rather than finding any real solution“, she said. Yordanova called on the submitters to review their bill again, noting that the preliminary impact assessment does not comply with the Rules of Procedure of the National Assembly.
During the re-voting, four were against, three "for" and nine abstained. Thus, the item did not enter the agenda of the committee, which continued its work with a second vote on bills amending and supplementing the State Property Act.