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A few more acute issues and a small set of journalistic traps, that was enough to demolish all the arguments of one of the faces of GERB and president of the temporary parliamentary commission for changes in the constitution, Desislava Atanasova.
Atanasova’s unfortunate appearance on bTV’s “120 Minutes”, where this time she was hosted by Maria Tsancarova, definitely showed one thing: GERB is used to asking awkward questions in her eyes.
So when Atanasova came out to speak in defense of her draft of a new Constitution, at one point she found herself pressed against a wall of questions to which there were no logical and reasonable answers.
She confused Lukashenko’s words with Borissov’s, there was no clear reason why the parliamentary commission assigned to her had met only once so far, and only for 15 minutes, and she could not answer why her party had been defending some “unfortunate” draft constitution for so long. , Case of the former Minister of Justice Danail Kirilov.
According to Atanasova, no one other than the Grand National Assembly had the right to reform the country’s Constitution, although she herself, as a deputy, has already seen how an ordinary National Assembly modifies the Basic Law in her part for the Supreme Council of the Judiciary in 2016 .
What is funnier is the fact that what is being discussed in your committee is not the current basic law, but the draft of a new one, a big difference, which is good for a deputy to be able to make.
The apologies also raise questions about the amount of work done by the constitution changes commission – a 15-minute meeting.
Of course, it is unlikely that there will be much work for a commission if its president believes that it is not his place to modify the already proposed draft of a new basic law. It does not matter that such powers were invested in the establishment of the commission …
What can be said about the attitude shown towards Danail Kirilov, the former Minister of Justice and former GERB deputy, identified as the author of the first draft of a new constitution, the one with spelling errors and a missing preamble?
In the end, the government put a lot of effort into defending this project, as well as the professionalism of its minister, before throwing them away. Now Kirilov would not even be called to the group of experts.
And while this is somewhat reassuring, why did they waste time defending him and even more so proposing him as Minister of Justice?
The confusion of Lukashenko’s quote and its attribution to Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is not even worth addressing. It’s probably easy to get confused when there’s a state leader in both places who has proposed a new constitution on the grounds that the protesters have asked for it themselves.
Yet throughout the interview with Desislava Atanasova there is a haunting sense of enduring neglect.
It is true that it is very possible that he had a bad time. Getting used to a different attitude, getting confused by the questions and just exposing yourself. Happens.
But that would have been important if this single interview had been an exception to the set, and not something that only underscores the feeling that our level in parliament has dropped to critical levels of professionalism and experience.
And although traditionally in our country we do not trust our deputies or the institution itself, in recent years this has intensified enormously.
When we see such interviews, when we witness amendments to the Penal Code through the final provisions of a completely different law: the Merchant Marine Code, when laws are written in parts and at the same time, there is talk of changing the Constitution, there is no way not to start one to experience a perfectly justified discomfort from this idea.
Yes, the Constitution needs some revisions, changes to bring it into line with the requirements of the Venice Commission for Democracy through Law. But this must be done with the utmost transparency and trust.
Atanasova claims that this will happen in a vote for the Grand National Assembly, as if the Supreme National Assembly were a pain reliever that cures everything.
No, it is not. To get to this stage, we need to go through at least a few others to help society regain confidence in the legislature.
And this is done with more experts, more meaningful work in parliament, evaluations of the impact of the laws that are being passed. And, of course, with more experience among the deputies themselves. Only then will it be possible to think of something else.
But until something like this happens, we will write the deputies’ statements in the column “Instead of a joke” and we will laugh at them through tears.
