Election of a Speaker continues to elude Bulgaria’s Parliament
The November 28 seventh day of the first sitting of Bulgaria’s 51st National Assembly saw Silvi Kirilov come within a whisker of being elected Speaker, falling short by just two votes in the latest of a long succession of second-round ballots.
Seventeen days since the first sitting began on November 11, the election of a Speaker continued to elude the Parliament elected just more than a month ago, on October 27.
A twist on November 28 was the stated agreement by Democratic Bulgaria, part of the We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria coalition, to back Kirilov, the 73-year-old ITN MP who as the oldest member has been presiding over the first sitting pending the election of a Speaker.
But WCC-DB’s Yavor Bozhankov and Daniel Lorer stuck to their resistance to Kirilov, denying him the two votes he needed.
Silvi Kirilov
After the adjournment of the sitting, WCC posted on Facebook that it was demanding the resignations of Lorer and Bozhankov and that Lorer had been, by decision of the WCC executive council, expelled from the party and all its structures.
Other aspects of the day were largely similar to all that has gone before, with minor variations.
Again, there were four candidates at the first round, though that was preceded by an appeal by the Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left for all to withdraw their candidates and name new ones.
This appeal finding no support, the first-round voting again resulted in two being shortlisted: Kirilov and Raya Nazaryan, the candidate from Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF coalition, who – as on all previous days – got 69 votes in both rounds, solely from GERB-UDF MPs.
At the conclusion of the day’s voting, support for Kirilov came from WCC-DB – with the exceptions noted – Vuzrazhdane, Ahmed Dogan’s loyalist Alliance for Rights and Freedoms Mps, and Mech.
The sitting is to continue on the morning of November 29.
The moves involving Lorer and Bozhankov could create a situation in which there are two parliamentary groups that are the second-largest.
In the October elections, WCC-DB won 37 seats and expelling Lorer and Bozhankov (who is from DB) would leave the coalition with 35. Vuzrazhdane has 35 MPs.
Bulgaria’s constitution says that the first mandate to seek to form a government must go to the largest parliamentary group, in this case, GERB-UDF. Borissov has said that his coalition will not try to fulfil the first mandate.
Having two second-largest groups would create an unprecedented situation regarding the second mandate, which must go to the second-largest group.
Please support The Sofia Globe’s independent journalism by becoming a subscriber to our page on Patreon:
