Parliament to Elect National Security Agency Head

 The National Assembly will vote to elect a new head of the State Agency for National Security on Friday, a day after prime minister Plamen Oresharski nominated the agency’s interim director, Vladimir Pisanchev, to the post.Earlier this week, a parliamentary committee held a hearing of the two candidates for the post – Pisanchev and Nedyalko Nedyalkov, head of the agency’s classified information directorate. The committee decided that both candidates were suitable for the post.In mid-June parliament appointed without debate as national security chief Delyan Peevski, a media mogul with power business interests in all spheres of the economy and no experience in the security field, triggering mass protests. Parliament’s withdrawal of Peevski’s appointment failed to appease the protesters who accuse the incumbents of serving business interests, and demand early elections. The protests have been going on for over a month. 

Pisanchev, born in 1963, has been working in the security sector since 1992. He was dismissed from the National Security Agency in 2008 for alleged involvement in unauthorized spying on journalists, MPs, and businessmen. He was reinstated by the centre-right GERB in 2012.