Bulgaria appears set for early elections as populist ITN says it will abandon bid for government
Bulgaria appears set for yet another early parliamentary election after populist party ITN, holder of the third and final mandate to seek to form a government, said that it would return the mandate unfulfilled.
Cable television presenter Slavi Trifonov, who leads ITN – the National Assembly’s smallest group – from outside Parliament said in a Facebook post that the mandate would be returned to President Roumen Radev on August 5.
Radev’s office told the media that the ceremony for the return of the mandate would take place at noon on Monday.
Returning the final mandate unfulfilled means that Radev would be obliged to declare an election date, two months hence from the failure of the process, and appoint a caretaker government. That caretaker government would be the successor-in-office of the current one, which was appointed in April 2024.
Having received the mandate from Radev on July 29 after the first two bids – by Parliament’s two largest groups, GERB-UDF and We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria – came to nothing, ITN invited all other parliamentary groups and “independent” MPs for talks.
ITN billed these talks as an exploration of common ground on policies ahead of the nomination of an “expert” government.
With not all groups accepting the invitation and some making it clear in advance that they would not vote for a government nominated with the third mandate, these talks, held in the presence of media cameras, were seen largely as an attempt at showmanship. The background of key figures in ITN’s minuscule parliamentary group is as scriptwriters.
In his Facebook post on August 4, Trifonov sought to apportion the blame for the failure of the third mandate on GERB-UDF and WCC-DB.
Should Bulgaria proceed to early parliamentary elections, widely expected to be held in October, this would be the seventh time in just more than three years that Bulgarians elect a legislature. Of the six elections since 2021, only two have produced an elected government.
(Photo, of government headquarters, the Party House – currently used for sittings of the National Assembly – and the Presidency building: parliament.bg)
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