Sofia Delays Reforms, Sparks Street Protest

Parliament today postponed action on a motion to abolish the Communist Party’s 43-year-old monopoly on power, provoking an outraged response from more than 20,000 pro-democracy demonstrators outside.

Bulgarians had widely expected the legislature to approve a request by the Central Committee of the Communist Party to strike a clause from the constitution guaranteeing the party’s leading role.

After state radio announced the decision to defer discussion on the motion for a month, the thousands of protesters outside Parliament became angry.

“We are here!” the demonstrators shouted in unison to the Communist deputies inside. “Come on out!”

Officials justified the decision by citing a little-known law stating that any motion to change the constitution must be acted on not less than a month after it is made but no later than three months afterward.

On Wednesday, the party’s governing Central Committee closed a three-day meeting by voting to propose that Parliament strike two clauses from the constitution that enshrine the party’s “leading role.”

If the proposal had been adopted by Parliament today, Romania and the Soviet Union would have become the only Warsaw Pact countries where the Communists’ political supremacy is legally guaranteed.

At a Communist-sponsored rally Wednesday evening, about 60,000 people cheered Petar Mladenov, who heads the party, when he told them that the party had decided to scrap its guaranteed leading role.

This has been a key demand of the opposition, for which thousands of people expressed support in recent days by joining in mass rallies.

“Our glorious party doesn’t need this (guarantee) anymore,” Mladenov told the rally outside party headquarters. “Without it we can win.”