Manoeuvring as Bulgaria’s Parliament starts pre-election session
Bulgaria’s National Assembly began its post-summer recess session on September 4, with manoeuvring and continuing dramas among various parliamentary groups keenly conscious of the coming early parliamentary elections in late October.
On the eve of the sitting, the Da Bulgaria party, founded by Hristo Ivanov, decided after intense deliberations to remain part of the We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition in the elections.
However, Volt, the party which lent its registration to WCC in the 2021 elections, announced on September 4 that it was leaving the WCC-DB coalition.
Volt said that it had been left out of coalition talks led by WCC and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (part of the Democratic Bulgaria coalition) and blamed those two groups for isolating it.
Volt is to meet on September 6 to decide its approach to standing in the October 27 elections.
On September 4, WCC-DB co-leader Kiril Petkov said that the coalition had a plan to get a government elected by the next, 51st, National Assembly.
“We have a political plan on how to get out of the political crisis,” Petkov said.
“We have already stated the idea of a non-partisan, equidistant public figure, economist or lawyer [as Prime Minister] to provide this new beginning, which this Parliament behind me could not,” he said.
Democratic Bulgaria co-leader and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria leader Atanas Atanassov said: “We stand in front of the Bulgarian voters and ask for a mandate to create a regular government in order to overcome this political crisis.
“We want to create an anti-corruption, Euro-Atlantic majority that will issue a government…if we do not have enough MPs, of course, we will appeal to all those who wish to support our plan,” Atanassov said.
Delyan Peevski, announced by the Ahmed Dogan faction of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) as ousted as co-leader and member of the party, insisted to reporters: “There is a MRF, there are separatists”.
“The MRF will be what the MRF is – a new beginning and you will see that in the elections,” said Peevski, who intends a coalition entitled “MRF – New Beginning” for the October elections.
Asked whether he would take to court the registration of the two coalitions – his and that of Dogan – Peevski said that there not two registrations and the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) must rule on the applications submitted.
Earlier this week, faced with the rival factions of the MRF, the CEC decided to accept both registration applications simultaneously.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), strife-torn like the MRF, said on September 4 that it and “more than 20 left-wing parties” would sign a coalition agreement to stand jointly in the October elections.
The 20 left-wing parties to which the BSP referred consist of minuscule parties largely made up of figures expelled or who quit Kornelia Ninova’s BSP.
Though Ninova has been expelled from the BSP by a September 1 decision of the party’s national council, she remains its representative by court registration.
The BSP parliamentary group, which had 16 members when the 50th National Assembly was constituted but at the time immediately expelled one of its number, shrank on September 4 to 14 when it was announced that Mihail Stavrev was resigning from the group. There was no immediate announcement of Stavrev’s reasons.
(Archive photo: parliament.bg)
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