Bulgaria: Post-election posturing
While final official results and seat distribution in Bulgaria’s 51st National Assembly elected on October 27 are still pending, parties and coalitions are posturing about the way forward, as prospects that the new Parliament will elect a government remain unclear.
Eight parties and coalitions were set to win seats in the next Parliament, according to partial results from Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission (CEC). The CEC has until close of business on October 31 to announce the distribution of seats among parties and coalitions.
Kiril Petkov, co-leader of the We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition, which won the second-largest share of votes, has called for a “cordon sanitaire” around Delyan Peevski’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning coalition. Peevski has been sanctioned by both the US and UK for large-scale corruption.
Petkov wants the other parliamentary groups to sign a declaration that they will not work in any form with Peevski’s group.
WCC-DB has said that it wants Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF to sign a declaration that it is not dependent on Peevski.
Even if GERB-UDF does so, opening the way for talks, WCC would not accept Borissov being nominated to be Prime Minister, Petkov said.
Before the October 27 elections, Borissov said that he would not be the nominee of GERB-UDF – which in the elections won the most votes and thus will get the first mandate to seek to form a government – if his coalition won fewer than 80 seats.
Unofficial calculations show that GERB-UDF won 69 seats.
WCC-DB also has ruled out being in a government that includes Kostadin Kostadinov’s pro-Russian party Vuzrazhdane.
In a brief response to Petkov on Facebook on October 30, GERB-UDF said that there was nothing new in the situation to comment on, barring that WCC-DB had admitted that it did not have a candidate to be the Prime Minister “equidistant from all parties” that WCC-DB had spoken of during the election campaign.
Vuzrazhdane leader Kostadinov said on October 30 that if WCC-DB wanted them to agree to the request for a “cordon sanitaire” around Peevski, his party would send WCC-DB two decisions to sign, one committing to a referendum on retaining the lev as Bulgaria’s currency, the other on keeping open the thermal power plants and Bulgaria’s coal-mining operations.
Before the elections, Vuzrazhdane said that it would negotiate on a government with all groups except Peevski’s.
In a media statement, Peevski responded to Petkov’s statements by saying that “the desperation and fears of failed political leaders and their formations have culminated in a dangerous direction for democracy and the rule of law in Bulgaria”.
“Faced with the insufficient trust they receive from the voters, once again, instead of humbling themselves and looking for a way out through the formation of a regular cabinet and stability, which the people have urgently demanded from their politicians, the failed politicians want power, but not according to the rules. At any cost,” said Peevski, who appeared in the statement to be trying to characterise WCC-DB’s move against him as racially-motivated.
Atanas Zafirov, acting leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party – which stood in the election as the main component of the BSP – United Left coalition and ran fifth – said that a coalition government was “inevitable”.
Participation in talks on a government requires a decision of collective bodies, which for the BSP are the national council and the party’s congress, plus the sanction of the newly formed coalition council.
Gabriel Valkov of BSP – United Left told Bulgarian National Television (BNT) that the group would not form a coalition with GERB-UDF and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.
Valkov cited a previous decision by the BSP congress which could be changed only by another congress.
“I’m not saying we won’t go to talks,” Valkov said.
“Politics is a dialogue, we have our programme, we can support certain policies. From here on, it’s a matter of many conversations,” he said.
“I had many conversations with people within the campaign and almost everyone said – ‘talk to each other, enough dividing red lines, enough circus in Parliament, it’s time for a normal dialogue’,” Valkov said.
MRF founder Ahmed Dogan, whose Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF) coalition ended sixth in the October 27 vote, said that ARF was the only one that already had set up a cordon around Peevski.
Dogan, who said that he would not take up the seat in Parliament to which he has been elected, told BNT that the “most logical” government was one involving GERB-UDF and WCC-DB, which ARF could support.
He called on the leaders of the formations in Parliament to put aside their party selfishness and show responsibility.
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