PRESIDENT Georgi Purvanov’s speech to Parliament on January 20 to mark his fourth year in office rankled opposition and government members with its demands for more rights and its air of a pre-election campaign.

Deputy head of the National Movement Simeon II, Nikolai Svinarov, said that the President was doubtlessly bidding for a second term.
Ivan Kostov, leader of the rightist party Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, called Purvanov’s speech boastful and tactless.

Purvanov said that Bulgaria needed “an active, working President - not a representative figure whose functions are limited to protocol.”

Although he did not advocate a presidential republic, which he said would be “an emotional expression of political nihilism,” Purvanov said that the law should be changed to require a bigger number of MPs to overthrow presidential vetoes. Signing international treaties and calling referendums without consulting Parliament should also be a presidential right, Purvanov said.

Purvanov criticised the proposed constitutional changes, the first reading of which Parliament is scheduled to debate on February 3. He insisted that MPs’ immunity from prosecution should be limited only to punitive immunity. This would ensure that MPs are arrested only after Parliament’s agreement, but be held culpable without exception in the event of having committed a crime. He said that impeachment should, as in the current procedure, be initiated by Parliament, but should be decided in the Constitutional Court, which he described as an independent apolitical institution.

Purvanov outlined his social commitments, which included pardoning the debts of pensioners and people on social welfare, and said that during his term he did more than the powers of his office required him to. As an example he cited his dealing with teachers’ strikes in December last year, the Sofia refuse crisis and the fight against organised crime. Purvanov said that the results of the latter were unimpressive, but his involvement was unprecedented in Bulgarian history.

The upcoming elections should not become an ideological battle between right and left, but an opportunity for leaders to come up with a unified political vision for Bulgaria now that the country had achieved its strategic aims and was on the way to speed up modernisation after January 2007, Purvanov said.

Although the President’s speech came 10 months ahead of elections and it is not known against whom Purvanov will be standing, Bulgarian Socialist Party MP Georgi Bozhinov said that he was certain that Purvanov would win. If Bozhinov’s prediction proves correct, Purvanov’s second term in office would be the first for a head of state in Bulgaria’s post-communist history.