“Two steps forward, one step back” – that is tango as described in laymen’s terms. The touted reforms in the judiciary and in healthcare are very much like learning to dance the tango. Health Minister Petar Moskov will retract the texts by force of which state-owned hospitals were to be privatized, from the Medical Institutions Act, said Prime Minister Boyko Borissov during Wednesday’s parliamentary hearing, adding that so much money had been invested in healthcare, yet people were far from happy with it. That is precisely what the government is trying to change with the amendments Minister Moskov has been putting forward, the Prime Minister said.

“Within the space of just a few years expenditures in health care have been going up. We spend BGN 4 billion as a state; as an addition 48 percent is covered by patients and these are enormous sums. The leaks in the National Health Insurance Fund, the clinical paths at private hospitals, most of them very expensive are the target of this reform. In the coming days we shall put it to discussion. I support what Minister Moskov said this morning, that he will retract these texts, so as not to breed tensions,” said Boyko Borissov.

The privatization of hospitals was a step approved by the cabinet a month ago by force of the amendments to the Medical Institutions Act. These texts were missing from the initial version and were inserted by Minister Moskov’s team at the last moment. But even before the opposition, MPs from the ruling coalition spoke out against the change which would mean striking 70 medical institutions, mostly state and municipally owned, off the privatization prohibition list of hospitals, including Pirogov emergency hospital. Tension inside GERB party was triggered when doctors from the party’s faction and members of the parliamentary healthcare committee started voicing their discontent. This discontent boiled over after the negative reaction by patients’, doctors’ and public organizations. As to the reform in the judiciary, Boyko Borissov touted a change of course - towards reducing the time span of trials. But the timing was off. When proposals on a reform in the judiciary submitted by the cabinet encountered overt or covert resistance by the prosecutor’s office, the Supreme Judicial Council and the politicians who are connected with them, the Prime Minister thought it fit to state his support. Coincidentally, or perhaps not, one day after the Supreme Bar Council presented their official position in favour of the proposals for a judicial reform, lawyers found themselves part of the vicious circle of petty crime. On two separate occasions on Wednesday – once during the hearing in parliament and before that – at the cabinet sitting, the Prime Minister acknowledged they were part of the problem. The reason for the new instructions – the ultimatum by the Patriotic Front which demanded results in the fight against petty crime. Boyko Borissov was explicit that the new initiative shall go ahead parallel with the implementation of the reform strategy now in place.

The Prime Minister targeted his attack at the excessive, as his words imply, rights of citizens within criminal procedure – something the prosecutor’s office and the investigating authorities have been harping on, the easiest excuse for their systematic failings in the fight against organized crime and corruption.

“If we want to see real results in the fight against crime, we must cut down on the length of time trials take,” said the Prime Minister in parliament. “And this must be a major element of the reform in the judiciary. For dozens and dozens of years we keep talking about the same people with cases pending. They drag along for years – first instance, second instance, third instance. There are the same kinds of problems at the customs, the traffic police. What about the people driving without a drivers’ license? They get caught today but tomorrow they are let go. A scourge of mammoth proportions – car thieves and housebreakers – with 40-50 cases pending. The net effect – a mere 1-2 percent get convicted. Lawyers get thieves off, and they go out and steal some more to pay their lawyers.”

Broaching the issue of major reform of the Criminal Procedure Code would mean ruination for the fragile reformist efforts in parliament. There is no way the National Assembly could deal with constitutional changes, with a brand new Judiciary Act and with amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code all at the same time. Nonetheless, Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov stated his support for amendments to the criminal proceedings, adding he was expecting to see the positions of the Prosecutor General and of the presidents of supreme courts on possible amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code.

English version: Milena Daynova