Bulgarian PM Borissov says he will resign if his party’s presidential candidate loses first round
Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov said on October 3 that he and his government would resign on November 6 if his party’s candidate loses the first round of presidential elections that day.
Borissov was speaking a day after announcing that his GERB party’s presidential candidate would be National Assembly Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva, with Vice-Admiral Plamen Manushev as the vice-presidential candidate.
“At the first round, if GERB loses these elections, that same evening we resign, because it is then parties are really competing, and after that they are seeking support, and people do not come out to vote. For us, the vote is at the first round, and if we lose, that evening you will get the resignation of the whole government,” Borissov told reporters on October 3.
“In every race, we choose the most prepared candidate. Tsetska Tsacheva and the Vice-Admiral are such, they do not have the highest ratings, but they are the most prepared,” Borissov said.
Commenting on some of the rival candidates, he said that Iliyana Yotova, vice-presidential candidate on the ticket of the Bulgarian Socialist Party’s initiative committee that has nominated Roumen Radev, was the real BSP candidate.
The nomination of Plamen Oresharski – occupant of the prime minister’s chair in the 2013/2014, brought down after public protests over the naming of Delyan Peevski to head the State Agency for National Security and the electoral failure of the BSP – was “a direct attack on us (GERB)”.
Oresharski was GERB’s most hated figure because of the damage inflicted by his unprepared admistration, Borissov said.
The GERB leader and Prime Minister declined to say who would succeed Tsacheva as Speaker of Parliament should she be elected President.
Asked whether Tsacheva would be a continuation of the policy of President Rossen Plevneliev, Borissov said that Plevneliev had received an excellent rating from all Western countries.
“We are members of the EU and Nato and so these assessments concern us much,” Borissov said.
Plevneliev’s mistake, according to Borissov, was that he made himself into a hawk “and I told him to his face and in public to a large degree, this worsens our relations with Russia,” Borissov said.
“Now I think that with the goodwill that we have, I, and president Putin and Medvedev, succeeded to regularise things,” he said, adding that the new President would enter an atmosphere of calm with all the important players.
