On Thursday, the second reading of amendments to the Election Code in Bulgaria took place in the National Assembly. Discussions on the idea for compulsory voting continued for two and a half hours. 109 MPs voted in favour, 74 - "against" and 10 abstained. BSP and MRF were against the amendment, but it passed with the votes of GERB, the Patriotic Front and ABC. The vote of GERB’s coalition partners of the Reformist Bloc was interesting. Two of their MPs voted "in favour," 13 were against and five abstained. MPs who voted against the amendments said compulsory voting was against democratic principles. BSP and MRF said the amendment was unconstitutional because voting was a right and not an obligation. Therefore, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms announced that it would attack the text in the Constitutional Court, despite the fact proposed amendments vaguely define compulsory voting as a "civic duty."

Voting on two more proposals for changes in the Election Code was no less intriguing. They were related to creating a constituency abroad and to holding referendums simultaneously with elections. In both cases, GERB reneged on its earlier decision and voted "against." Only a year ago the majority in the National Assembly adopted a decision on conducting elections "two in one." Now, because of this amendment, a referendum initiated by showman Slavi Trifonov will be held in July or August, not together with the presidential election this fall. The questions included in the referendum concern compulsory voting, reducing by half the number of MPs, reducing state subsidies to political parties and conducting majority elections in two rounds for heads of the regional directorates and regional offices of the Ministry of Interior.

Another surprise was the vote on the third part of amendments. MPs from GERB voted against a text proposed by their own party to create a separate constituency abroad. This way they supported the MRF and BSP and together with the Patriotic Front, ABC, the Ataka Party and the Bulgarian Democratic Centre rejected the amendment adopted earlier by the parliamentary legal committee. This means Bulgarians abroad can vote only for party lists, but cannot prefer an individual candidate -a right that voters in the country have.

The most impressive result of the voting was political tensions created in the ruling coalition between GERB and the Reformist Bloc, which in this case stood united as never before.

English: Alexander Markov