Former deputy minister of emergency situations and current MP for the ethnic Turk Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), Delyan Peevski was rejected by Parliament as MRF's nominee for the parliamentary anti-corruption, conflict of interest and parliamentary ethics committee.

His nomination was voted down on July 29 with 156 votes to 60, with one abstention, Bulgarian daily Dnevnik said.

Peevski had previously been sacked as deputy minister over a corruption row, but was subsequently restored to his position by former Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev.

A breakdown of the votes by parties, showed that 25 MPs of the Bulgarian Socialist Party-led Coalition for Bulgaria and 35 from MRF had supported Peevski's nomination. Against it were 114 MPs from GERB, 18 from Ataka, 13 from the Blue Coalition and 10 from the Order Law and Justice (OLJ) party, Dnevnik said.

Lyutvi Mestan, MP for the MRF, was quoted by Dnevnik as saying that parliament showed "political bias towards the constitutional rights of members of parliament."

"Equality before the law meant no one was untouchable, that everyone was absolutely equal before the law, including in respect of their rights," Mestan said.

Mestan said parliament had assumed guilt on part of an MP and taken on role and function of judicial authorities.

Unlike other parliamentary committees, members of the anti-corruption committee were voted individually, as proposed by Blue Coalition MP Dimo Gyaourov.

Accepted as members of the committee were Nikolay Kotsev form GERB, Boiko Velikov from the Coalition for Bulgaria, Dimo Gyaourov from the Blue Coalition, Valentin Ivanov from Ataka and Yane Yanev for OLJ.

It was also decided that the committee would have a rotating chairperson, to start with the smallest Parliament group. This means Yanev would be the committee's chair for the fist two hearings. Only the Coalition for Bulgaria objected to this principle, as it meant the coalition would be last to chair the committee. GERB said that it would allow all other parties to chair the committee, but not its own MPs, in order to ensure transparency.