Bulgaria to hold early parliamentary elections on date between September 28 and October 12

Bulgaria is to hold early national parliamentary elections on a date between September 28 and October 12 2014, President Rossen Plevneliev said after a meeting of more than four and a half hours of the Consultative Council for National Security.

The meeting, attended by GERB leader Boiko Borissov, Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Sergei Stanishev, Movement for Rights and Freedoms leader Lyutvi Mestan and Ataka leader Volen Siderov, was called by Plevneliev against a background of the BSP’s decisive defeat in Bulgaria’s May 25 2014 European Parliament elections.

Borissov’s centre-right GERB, the largest party in the current National Assembly and which also took by far the largest share of votes in the European Parliament elections, earlier called for elections on September 28.

The MRF earlier, in being the first party in the ruling axis to call for the resignation of the cabinet and early elections, said that the elections should be held either at the end of November or beginning of December. Recently, however, it has said that the initiative should be left up to the BSP, current holder of the mandate to govern.

Reportedly, an executive bureau meeting of the BSP on June 16 decided not to put forward a proposed election date at the June 17 meeting of the Consultative Council on National Security, but decided to negotiate the issue separately with other political parties, including two that do not have seats in the National Assembly but do have European Parliament seats – the Bulgaria Without Censorship party and the Reformist Bloc.

The meeting of the Consultative Council on National Security took place behind a ring of heavy security outside the Presidency, with anti-government protesters chanting demands for the government’s resignation.

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