Vazrazhdane will not take part in the vote for a new Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) if GERB and DPS have representatives on it. Party leader Kostadin Kostadinov said this on the BNT show "The Day Begins".
"We will back candidates who are not part of the GERB and DPS quota," he said. The new SJC will be chosen on the 19th. The party has pushed for a re-election of the council without this quota since 2021.
Kostadinov thinks Tsveta Rangelova has performed best of the candidates so far. He said professional skills do not always decide who gets a seat on the SJC.
The Vazrazhdane leader rejected claims that his party's voters backed Iliana Iotova in the presidential election as part of a political deal. He said the votes also had nothing to do with a party candidate for the SJC. The election result showed that these voters' stance affects the final outcome, and that the stance was their own, he added.
Since the presidential election, Vazrazhdane has become a force that politics cannot avoid, Kostadinov said. He said the party is relying on political consistency and on restoring citizens' trust in politicians.
The interview also turned to the Bulgarian language bill, which parliament passed at first reading. The text sets out when foreign languages may be used in public. Kostadinov said it puts an end to dual-language signs and to so-called "shlyokavitsa".
The Vazrazhdane leader pointed to the English signs on the buildings of Bulgarian National Television and the National Assembly. He said Bulgarian is the state language, and duplicate signs in a foreign language are not allowed in public. In his view, English on direction signs is not legal and breaks the current transliteration law.
Transliteration is set by law and covers only personal names as they appear in ID documents, geographic names such as rivers, villages and towns, and names of streets and squares, Kostadinov explained. Bulgarian words in Latin letters, such as "oligarchy", are not transliteration but "shlyokavitsa", he said.
The bill allows exceptions for commercial and tourist sites, listed in Article 4, line 3. Signs in a foreign language make sense for places that mainly serve foreigners, Kostadinov said. They can be in French and German as well as English, as in hotels.
He denied that the proposal targets only English.
Shlyokavitsa will live on online and in everyday talk, which cannot be regulated, the Vazrazhdane leader admitted. But the law will stop the dual-language signs that have taken hold in public life, he said. "After all, we are not a totalitarian state either, and if someone wants to be illiterate, nobody can stop them."