Bulgaria to hold early elections after BSP gives up mandate
The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), holder of the third and final mandate to seek to form a government, will return it unfulfilled to President Roumen Radev on July 28, BSP parliamentary leader Georgi Svilenski said.
This means that Bulgaria will head to early parliamentary elections, to be held on a date to be decreed by Radev as head of state.
Svilenski’s July 27 announcement followed a decision in Parliament not to include on the day’s agenda a vote on the legislative and governance plan agreed by the We Continue the Change (WCC) party, BSP and Democratic Bulgaria.
A BSP national council meeting on July 26 agreed that should Parliament vote in favour of the plan, it would proceed to nominate a candidate Prime Minister.
The GERB-UDF group proposed removing the governance plan from Wednesday’s parliamentary agenda. The GERB-UDF proposal was backed by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, ITN and Vuzrazhdane.
“It became clear that Vuzrazhdane is a crutch of GERB, and ITN of the MRF,” Svilenki said.
“It became clear that from the first day when ITN expressed a desire for talks, everything was hypocritical behaviour and they never intended for Bulgaria to have a working government,” he said.
“What happened today showed the Bulgarian society who is on which side of this dividing line – the people and parties who want to fight corruption and those who want to protect corruption.”
Svilenski said that the danger that lies ahead for the country is the responsibility of those who did not support Bulgaria having a functioning parliament and government.
(Archive photo: Radev, right, hands the mandate to Svilenski on July 18)
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