Amid harsh protests from the opposition, the ruling majority in Parliament voted to approve the second reading of the second chapter of the draft bill to set up the State Agency for National Security (SANS).
The main points of conflict on December 4 were about the way the chairperson of SANS would be appointed and the professional criteria that the chairperson should meet. After the text was put to the vote twice, Parliament approved, by 118 votes in favour, 39 against and one abstention, the provision that the SANS chairperson will be nominated by the Cabinet and will be appointed by presidential decree for a term of five years.
Right-wing opposition parties said that this would give President Georgi Purvanov power and influence over SANS in contradiction to the constitution. Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria MP Atanas Atanasov said: “If the president is the one to appoint the head of SANS, this means that he will have the power to release him from office as well. Furthermore, the constitution says that the prime minister, not the president, is the person directly responsible for the country’s national security.” Atanasov proposed that that the SANS chairperson be nominated by the Cabinet and be appointed only if approved by a two-thirds majority in Parliament. The majority coalition parties rejected this proposal.
The opposition criticised the bill’s provisions on the professional criteria the chairperson should meet. The adopted text of the bill says that the head of SANS must hold Bulgarian citizenship only. He or she must “have graduated from a higher educational establishment, have earned a master’s degree, and have 10 years of professional experience in security services”. Again the opposition wanted a text to be included prohibiting people who have worked in any capacity for the former communist security police State Security from being appointed to SANS. This was rejected, 106 against, 45 votes in favour, and 14 abstentions.
This motion had a lot to do with the fact that Purvanov has a file in the archives of the former State Security. He worked under the name of Agent Gotse as a history expert. Purvanov had admitted to the existence of the file but has denied that he knew at the time that he was working for State Security.
Atanasov and the right-wing opposition received support in their demands from Tatyana Doncheva, an MP from the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party. Until 2001, when he took office as president, Purvanov was leader of the BSP.
“Gotse will not last forever and changes in the law can be made in the future,” she told Parliament.
MPs decided that the agency’s administration will consist of four chief directorates: Internal Security, Counterintelligence, Economic and Financial Security, and Technical Operations, and four directorates: Financial Intelligence, Inspectorate, Information and Archives, and Co-ordination, Information and Analysis. It will split off the current National Security Service from the Interior Ministry, Military Counterintelligence from the Defence Ministry and Financial Intelligence Agency from the Finance Ministry. These services will be incorporated into SANS.
Among the functions of the new agency would be to exercise control over the stay of foreigners in Bulgaria. SANS will organise surveillance and control, of people, objects and activities.
Setting up SANS was proposed by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev in June this year. He said that it would be a way of fighting organised crime and high-level corruption.
