Bulgarian President to offer Reformist Bloc mandate to form government on December 12
Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev will offer the third and final exploratory mandate to try to form a government to the centre-right Reformist Bloc parliamentary group on December 12.
This was announced by Plevneliev’s office on December 7 after the National Assembly’s second-largest group, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, formally declined an exploratory mandate, five days after Boiko Borissov’s GERB party refused one.
The Reformist Bloc confirmed on December 7 that should they be offered an exploratory mandate, they would embark on talks to try to form a government.
The bloc will speak first to Borissov’s GERB, the largest party in the current National Assembly.
Borislav Velikov, deputy chairperson of the Reformist Bloc’s parliamentary group, said that if GERB refused support, the bloc would immediately return the mandate to Plevneliev.
At the ceremony on December 7 at which the BSP was offered a mandate, party leader Kornelia Ninova urged President Plevneliev to accelerate the offering of the third mandate, to enable Bulgaria to go to elections as soon as possible.
Ninova’s statement, however, did not take account of the fact that according to the constitution, Plevneliev – because he is within the final three months of his term in office – is not entitled to dissolve Parliament and call elections.
In the current situation, Plevneliev is empowered only, once the ritual of mandate-offering is completed, to appoint a caretaker government.
Ninova said that the slow pace at the moment did not guarantee stability, but just the opposite.
The Borissov government, which while it has resigned remains in office pending a new administration, was awarding public procurements of 1.4 billion leva, handing out high-level government jobs and appointing ambassadors abroad, Ninova claimed.
She said that the nomination of Bulgaria’s next European Commissioner (to replace Kristalina Georgieva, who in January 2017 takes up the post of World Bank chief executive) and the appointment of the next Defence Chief should be left to the caretaker government to be appointed by Roumen Radev, or to the next elected cabinet.
/Politics
