Bulgarian elections 2014: Borissov speaks on coalition government prospects
Boiko Borissov, leader of the centre-right GERB party widely expected to win by far the largest share of votes in Bulgaria’s October 5 2014 elections, has said that he is deeply worried that the election may not be followed by the formation of a new government, plunging the country into instability “for years”.
Borissov was speaking in an interview with local Darik Radio on September 27, a day after taking issue with a report by news agency Reuters that he had spoken in an interview of willingness for a “broad coalition” government after the October early parliamentary elections.
He told Darik that he did not exclude supporting a BSP government if the BSP beat GERB, “I would support making decisions in the name of stability”. (No poll envisages the BSP getting more votes than GERB.)
Of the centre-right Reformist Bloc, which many commentators – earlier including Borissov himself – named as the most compatible partner in a GERB-led coalition government, he said that they appeared unwilling to be in a centre-right coalition.
Borissov ruled out a coalition with Nikolai Barekov’s populist Bulgaria Without Censorship (BWC) party and said that there were no local organisation of his GERB party that would support a coalition government with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms or BWC.
“After the fifth, it is very possible that no government will be formed, and this will drag us into a very difficult, incurable crisis for years.”
Borissov said that even a high election result for GERB would not necessarily mean stability.
“We need this result to allow other political parties to see what their condition is. And if we love our country, then we must sit down and look for a way to overcome this extremely severe crisis, without driving the state to bankruptcy,” Borissov said.
Separately, on September 27 Bulgarian-language daily 24 Chassa reported GERB deputy leader Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the party’s election campaign chief, as saying that a stable government would require voter turnout of 58 to 61 per cent on October 5.
Tsvetanov was quoted as saying that GERB would form a government on its own and each party in the new Parliament would then state its position.
He said that if Bulgaria’s voters made GERB the leader in the next government, “through constructive dialogue and consensus we can have a strong centre-right coalition, but we will need clear parameters and commitments and a public agreement so that it would clear that there is no arm-twisting”.
(Photo: gerb.bg)
