Ninth day of first sitting of Bulgaria’s Parliament again fails to produce a Speaker
The December 4 ninth day of the first sitting of Bulgaria’s strife-torn 51st National Assembly – elected on October 27 and the first sitting of which began on November 11 – again failed to see a Speaker elected.
Without an elected Speaker, Parliament cannot proceed to transact business and the continuing failure is also an obstacle to the start of the process of seeking to form a government.
A key factor in the stalemate is that in terms of the 2023 amendments to the constitution, the Speaker of Parliament is eligible to be appointed caretaker Prime Minister. There is a widespread perception that Bulgaria is headed to yet another early parliamentary election, to be preceded by the appointment of a caretaker government.
There were four candidates at the first round: new entrant Atanas Atanassov (We Continue the Change -Democratic Bulgaria), Natalia Kiselova (Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left), Petar Petrov (Vuzrazhdane) and Silvi Kirilov, the 73-year-old ITN MP who as this Parliament’s oldest member has been presiding over the sitting pending the election of a Speaker.
In the first round, Kiselova got the most votes, 88, from BSP – United Left and Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF, which did not field its own candidate, against its earlier stated intention to nominate former Speaker Raya Nazaryan.
Kirilov got the second-most votes, 82, propelling him into a run-off with Kiselova.
In the second round, both fell short of the required half plus one of MPs present – Kirilov got 100 votes and Kiselova 88.
The sitting is to continue on December 5.
