Bulgarian parliament fails to meet on drug dealer pardon as only 80 of 240 MPs show up
A hearing on the pardon granted by Iliana Iotova to the drug dealer dubbed the "Petrich Escobar" collapsed for lack of quorum. The opposition accused the ruling camp of shielding the president.
Archive image · Photo: Лорд Бъмбъри / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped and resized)
Bulgaria's parliament failed to convene on Tuesday for an extraordinary sitting, forced by the opposition, on the pardon of a drug dealer known as the "Petrich Escobar". Eighty-seven lawmakers registered at the first roll call and only 80 of 240 at the second. Speaker Mihaela Dotsova then said the sitting could not be held without a quorum.
At the second roll call, the ruling Progressive Bulgaria had only three members present, against 28 from GERB-UDF, 18 from Democratic Bulgaria, 16 from the MRF, 13 from Continue the Change and two from Vazrazhdane. The hearing was to have questioned the head of the prisons directorate, the governor of Sofia Prison and his 2022 predecessor.
Iliana Iotova, now president, pardoned the man in December 2022 while serving as vice president. Continue the Change cites a video it says shows him in a fight at the prison hospital about three weeks earlier. Opposition politicians accused the ruling camp of shielding Iotova, and a Vazrazhdane lawmaker said she should step down and quit the election campaign.