Bulgarian Parliament votes two deputy PMs into Cabinet
A day after Parliament’s sitting was scrapped over the lack of a quorum, Bulgarian lawmakers finally succeeded in holding a vote on June 27 to invest two new deputy prime ministers in the Plamen Oresharski Cabinet.
Interior Minister Tsvetlin Yovchev and Daniela Bobeva were voted into office by 112 MPs from the ruling coalition, while 13 MPs from ultra-nationalist party Ataka abstained. It was Ataka’s presence in Parliament that provided the necessary quorum and allowed the sitting to go ahead.
Bobeva will be Deputy PM without portfolio responsible for economic development, co-ordinating economic policy, investment and relations with international financial institutions, and will also oversee the introduction of e-government services.
Sofia-born Bobeva is a director of central Bulgarian National Bank, a university associate professor and was trade minister in the Stefan Sofiyanski caretaker cabinet in 1997, which was appointed when the socialist government of the time collapsed amid mass protests because of the financial and economic disaster into which it had led Bulgaria.
Bobeva has been employed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the ministry of social affairs, was vice president of the Black Sea Bank, director of the economic programme at the Center for the Study of Democracy, director of the international cooperation directorate at BNB.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
