Bulgaria's Constitutional Court has thrown out a challenge to the way seats are shared out on the Central Election Commission, the court said. Judges voted 11 to 0 in favor.
The challenge came from 49 MPs in the 52nd parliament, and the case opened on 17 July. Judge Yanaki Stoilov was the rapporteur.
The judges said they found no breach — not of the rule of law, not of the right to equal and direct suffrage, and not of political pluralism.
In its reasoning, the court said the whole dispute comes down to Article 46(8) of the Electoral Code. The text allows two ways to split the commission's seats, and they don't give the same result. The court said the law simply isn't detailed enough. That leaves it unclear whether the president must follow one exact math formula, step by step, or can choose between the options. The only rule is that no single party or coalition can hold a majority on the commission. That's exactly the situation now. By issuing the rules and method he used, the president did nothing different from — or beyond — what Article 46(8) already says, the court noted.
BTA recalls the dispute began back in June. When the nominees for commission members were presented to acting president Iliyana Yotova during consultations at the presidency, some parliamentary groups objected to the procedure itself.