Bulgaria’s anti-government Protest Network demands clarity on resignation of cabinet, election date
Bulgaria’s anti-government Protest Network has written to Plamen Oresharski and the four parliamentary groups in the National Assembly, with a copy to President Rossen Plevneliev, demanding precise clarity on when the cabinet will resign and an accurate roadmap to early parliamentary elections.
The letter, handed over on June 24, comes a day before a month has passed since the May 25 European Parliament elections in Bulgaria that reinvigorated calls for the current cabinet to resign in the light of the sound defeat handed to the Bulgarian Socialist Party, since May 2013 holder of the mandate to govern.
The Protest Network’s letter noted that according to the agreement at the Consultative Council on National Security on June 17, political consultations on the inevitable early elections had been meant to start.
The fact that these consultations had not started meant, once again, disappointment for people who had believed that the resignation of the cabinet was forthcoming.
“The crisis in the country has grown into a disaster,” letter said, adding that the protesters had warned that this was inevitable.
Bulgaria was facing a natural disaster (a reference to the Varna and Dobrich deadly floods) which showed the absence of a state, a serious problem in the banking sector, which showed the absence of a state, and a refusal to conduct dialogue with the EU on key state issues such as the future of South Stream and the European funds for the next programming period, which showed the absence of a state, the letter said.
The letter said that the government had collapsed a year ago on June 14, a reference to the date of the start of the protests demanding the resignation of the cabinet after the abortive appointment of Delyan Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security.
The only thing that the ruling coalition, in the form of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and Ataka had proven in a year was that they were subject to personal ambitions.
The Protest Network demanded the prompt resignation of the cabinet and the dissolution of the 42nd National Assembly immediately after the resignation.
On June 24, BSP leader Sergei Stanishev said that his party would send an official invitation to the leaders of the parties represented in Parliament to hold consultations on early parliamentary elections, the tasks of the National Assembly, the role of the interim government and the Bulgarian nomination for European Commissioner.
June 24 had been the date on which consultations had been meant to start, but this did not happen.
