Only for 6 months the ruling majority in the person of the cabinet “Denkov“ drafted and passed changes to the Constitution that had been talked about for years. Some of them were that Bulgarian MPs and ministers will be able to have other citizenships, the Supreme Judicial Council will be split into two, not every person chosen by the president will be able to be ex-officio prime minister, and the National Assembly (NA) will not dissolves to exercise control over the office. After that, we witnessed the whole mess that happened around the creation of the “Glavchev” cabinet. How to view these changes… Lawyer Anton Stankov spoke to FACTS.
- Attorney Stankov, what does constitutional reform mean and what is the point in general when someone starts making changes to the Constitution?
- Unfortunately, the word reform in Bulgaria is already deeply compromised. The true meaning of the word has been lost. “Re-form“ means the transmission of a new form of something - in the case of the Constitution. The recent changes to the Constitution have generally set some new form, including perhaps a new form of government, which will be subject to discussion in the Constitutional Court. The reason for this is that the reform affected all three authorities – the judiciary, the executive, as well as the National Assembly - the legislative power. The powers of the president were cut, other functions were given to him, we have changes, new regulations in almost the entire field of the state system.
- And what was at the basis of the changes - the desire to make President Radev dirty or do you see some legal logic?
- With all due respect, I see no legal logic in what we see as a fact of the so-called constitutional changes. This new regulation in force constantly confronts us day after day with new questions, respectively, it shows that these changes were not well thought out. In that sense, the answer to your question is the other way around. Changes were made to the “persona“ - as we lawyers say, the changes are also in view of the personality of the president. I don't approve of this either, because President Radev is at the zenith of his second term and I don't see what he could have done so much. Only the next president will face the problems that President Radev currently has.
- So what should we expect - changes to the changes in the Constitution or a faster decision by the Constitutional Court. If the SC reverses these changes or part of them, what follows…
- I do not believe that the Constitutional Court will gather the legal and political courage to rule on the changes before the already scheduled elections on June 9. In my opinion, there are grounds for declaring certain texts unconstitutional. There are two main reasons for this. One is the procedure by which these changes occurred. I am referring to the method of voting and the formation of a majority, for the differences in majorities - some with 2/3, some with more, which also determines the terms between the three readings. The other reason is the competence of the ordinary National Assembly, given the defined Grand National Assembly, which has much more powers to make in-depth changes to the Constitution. On these two grounds at least, I think that a ruling on unconstitutionality can be expected. And what will be the consequences of the decision of the Supreme Court, it is difficult for me to predict. The practice of the Constitutional Court regarding normative acts is categorically determined that the effect of the decision on unconstitutionality is forward, after the entry into force of the decision of the Constitutional Court, without restoring the effect of the old texts. The "holes" that will appear in the Constitution with such a decision should be filled only with new constitutional norms. That is precisely why I claim that the dynamics of the political processes preceded the pronouncement of the SC. We must also say that the Constitutional Court is definitely not bound by its practice until now, because the Constitutional Court changes its composition, the political situation changes.
- Why is the SC delaying the decision?
- At the beginning, I thought that after the changes that became a fact at the end of last year, the CC was waiting for more questions to be collected so that it could consider its decisions. But there is something else. With the delayed pronouncement of the Constitutional Court, the political timing is already lost, the public rhythm is disturbed. And the fact that the Constitutional Court has not made a decision poses quite serious questions to society, such as you are currently posing.