Bulgaria's Biggest Party to Submit Electoral System Bill Thursday

The biggest parliamentary force, GERB, is to table a bill changing Bulgaria's electoral system from proportional representation voting to majority voting, a lawmaker has said.

The bill is to be reviewed by the Legal Affairs Commitee on Tuesday and then possibly go to Parliament's floor, Focus News Agency quotes Danail Kirilov, who heads the committee, as saying.

Kirilov's announcement comes after a call by the national ombudsman, but also by several other political parties, for a change of the electoral system, just several months out of an early election this spring.

While the MP has not gone into details, he has added a "new model" will be proposed for voting abroad which is "much better" than the current one.

The outgoing legislature, due to be dissolved by end-January at the latest, is under increasing pressure to heed the will of more than 2.5 million voters who said "yes" when asked in a referendum whether Bulgaria should introduce a two-round first-past-the-post system, make elections and referenda obligatory, and drastically cut state subsidies for political parties.

Some experts have been warning a change should not be adopted in a hurry, only for the sake of affecting the results of the forthcoming election.