Borissov cagey on coalition question as exit polls show 8-party parliament
Boiko Borissov’s GERB party emerged as expected with the largest share of votes in Bulgaria’s October 5 parliamentary elections, but the apparent spread of seats among eight parties left him declining to be drawn on the issue of forming a coalition government.
There has been much comment that the natural partners in a centre-right coalition would be GERB and the Reformist Bloc, but first projections by a number of polling agencies suggested that the two would not have enough to form a government.
Borissov said that he was ready to do anything to avoid the worst-case scenario of yet another early parliamentary election, but also said that it was too early to give definite answers to questions about a coalition because what had been made public was “very raw data”.
Speaking to reporters, Borissov did, however, give some signals – again being publicly contemptuous towards the Reformist Bloc, among other things for its stance that a possible coalition should not have Borissov as prime minister.
Asked repeatedly about the possibility of a broad coalition, Borissov’s answers were a mixture of declining to be drawn while also saying that the Bulgarian Socialist Party – so he had heard – had said that it would go into opposition.
He also said that his party did not want to govern with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.
“With this configuration (of parties in parliament) I don’t know how we will come up with a government.”
Again asked about a broad-based coalition of most – if not all – the parties that made it into the 43rd National Assembly, Borissov said that he could not speak for other parties.
Borissov said that GERB would not hold the traditional election night news conference but would speak only on October 6 or 7 after the Central Election Commission had announced official results.
He appealed to leaders of other political parties to go home and contemplate modestly how their parties had done in the elections.
