BULGARIA’S PARLIAMENT APPROVES HOLDING REFERENDUM AND LOCAL ELECTIONS ON THE SAME DAY

On 21st of July, Bulgaria’s Parliament adopted at second reading the amendments to the law on direct participation of citizens in the government. According to the amendments, referendum will be held at the same time as local elections and the number of signatures required for a petition for calling a referendum is lowered from 500,000 to 400,000.

The MPs voted against the proposals made by the centre-left ABC party and the nationalist alliance “Patriotic Front” for dropping the threshold to 300,000 and respectively to 350,000 signatures, as well as against the proposal of the centrist liberal “Movement for Rights and Freedoms” (MRF) to increase the required signatures from 500,000 to 800,000.

The MRF’s leader, Lyutvi Mestan, reiterated that the discussed amendments were directly related to the referendum proposed by the Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev. He said that the election of MPs through majority vote, as proposed by Plevneliev, would result in one-party rule.