Head of State Rumen Radev will address the Bulgarian people tonight, the presidential institution announced.
The address will be at 7:00 p.m.
The topic of the possible resignation of Head of State Rumen Radev is increasingly insistent in the media and public discourse.
It is interesting to note that since the restoration of the presidential institution, not a single Bulgarian head of state has left office through resignation.
From „Dondukov“ 2, however, have recently indirectly fueled the ground for such talk.
At the end of last week, the Presidential Secretary for Security and Defense and former Minister of Defense Dimitar Stoyanov published a video on his Facebook profile with calls for Radev to form a party.
Radev himself in December last year, answering a question whether he was ready to come up with his own political project from the presidential institution, said: "I will do it when you least expect it." He has also said more than once that he is called upon to form a party.
The "Third March Movement" has repeatedly stated that they recognize Radev as their informal leader, even though he himself has distanced himself from them. The leader of the movement, Tihomir Atanasov, even stated that he would give up his seat to “the only politician who can lead the country out of the political and economic crisis“.
Since Friday, only one thing is certain, after the APS also returned an unfulfilled mandate to form a government – we are going to early parliamentary elections.
And while we are guessing about the latter, here is what the Constitution says if Radev resigns:
Art. 97. (1) The powers of the President and the Vice President shall be terminated early upon:
1. resignation before the Constitutional Court;
2. permanent inability to exercise their powers due to serious illness;
3. under the conditions of Art. 103;
4. death.
(2) In the cases of items 1 and 2, the powers of the President and Vice-President shall be terminated upon the Constitutional Court establishing the circumstances specified therein.
(3) In the cases of paragraph 1, the Vice-President shall assume the office of President until the end of the term.
(4) If the Vice-President is unable to assume the office, the powers of the President shall be exercised by the Speaker of the National Assembly until the election of the President and Vice-President. In this case, elections for President and Vice-President shall be held within two months.
What happens if the Vice-President also resigns
As is clear from the text of the Basic Law, in the event that Vice-President Iliana Yotova also resigns, we will also go to extraordinary elections for the head of state. However, she did not give answers to journalistic questions that would suggest that she was preparing to leave “Dondukov“ 2.
The topic was also commented on by constitutionalists. “Until the president has resigned before the Constitutional Court, what can be commented on are hypotheses. If the powers of the president and vice president are terminated, the speaker of the National Assembly performs the functions of head of state and the parliament is obliged to schedule elections for head of state within two months“, explained the former speaker of the National Assembly Natalia Kiselova recently.
“The talks in the parliamentary group were about cooperation with the president, since the BSP supports him, but now for a new political project it is a matter that will be discussed after it is a fact“, commented Kiselova on a possible new political project for the president.
According to the words of the constitutional law lecturer Prof. Plamen Kirov, the Constitutional Court must consider Radev's resignation, if there is one, and make a decision to terminate the mandate. According to him, the Constitutional Court cannot refuse if it is convinced that this is the will of the president. Prof. Kirov confirmed that if the vice president also resigns, then early presidential elections will follow.