Who is who in the 52nd National Assembly? What professions do the new MPs have and how many of them have never crossed the threshold of parliament before? Details are revealed in the column “Numbers of the Week” on Nova TV today, when the new 240 MPs cross the threshold of the 52nd parliament for the first time.
There will be 57 women in the new parliament of Bulgaria, which represents a quarter of all MPs. In the elections on April 19, they fought for their seats with nearly 1,400 other female candidates. The competition among the men was even fiercer. Over 3,300 people competed there.
Economist, lawyer, entrepreneur and engineer are the most common professions. Half of the MPs are like that. Among the rest, there are 15 doctors, with various specialties and quite a few former employees of the state and municipal administration. The large number of former employees of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the military is impressive. There is also a captain of a passenger plane; a captain of a ship; a former nurse who now works as a lawyer; a choreographer; an artist and a football referee.
Brand new MPs will also be some of the most popular Bulgarian athletes, all of them from the group of “Progressive Bulgaria”. These are the multiple Olympic medalist in artistic gymnastics Yordan Yovchev; the long-time captain of our national volleyball team Vladimir Nikolov; the world swimming champion Petar Stoychev; the Olympic karate champion Ivet Goranova and the world-renowned acrobat, creator of “Night of the Stars” in support of talented children, Encho Keryazov.
In fact, a record number of MPs will be such for the first time. 54% of them have never been MPs, and almost all of them are representatives of “Progressive Bulgaria”.
Another record holder, but on the other side, is Dzhevdet Chakarov from the MRF. He already has 13 mandates behind him and today begins his 14th. This makes him the MP with the longest tenure. The honor of opening the first session will go to Lieutenant General from the reserve and national security expert Rumen Milanov. Since traditionally this is done by the oldest among all. He is 77 years old and enters parliament as part of the “Progressive Bulgaria” group. Exactly 54 years younger than him is Anna Bodakova from PP-DB. She is 23 and is one of the youngest deputies ever to cross the threshold of the National Assembly.
The electoral districts whose representatives will be distributed most evenly in parliament are Burgas and Stara Zagora. They send deputies from all 5 parties and coalitions there. And the most deputies from one party, this time, is sent by Varna - 9 people from “Progressive Bulgaria”. However, none of the 31 electoral districts in the country has elected deputies from only one party force.
What the distribution of mandates should be is determined by the Central Election Commission according to the current population size in each place, using data from the National Statistics Institute. Thus, the voters of the following regions send the most deputies: 23rd electoral district Sofia - 19 people, followed by Varna with 16 deputies, Burgas and 25th MIR-Sofia send 14 each, and the last Sofia region - 13.
The fewest mandates - 4 each, receive 1/3 of the electoral districts. These are Vidin, Gabrovo, Kyustendil, Lovech, Montana, Pernik, Razgrad, Silistra, Smolyan, Targovishte and Yambol. Four are also sent from votes abroad.