Bulgaria’s opposition We Continue the Change party confirms Vassilev as leader
In an unanimous vote with 289 delegates in favour, Bulgaria’s reformist We Continue the Change (WCC) party elected former finance minister Assen Vassilev as its leader at the close of a two-day general assembly on September 28.
Vassilev has been sole leader of WCC since former Prime Minister Kiril Petkov announced on June 25 that he was resigning as co-leader of the party and as a member of Parliament.
Petkov stepped down amid controversry related to allegations of pressure on the mayors Bulgarian capital city Sofia’s Lyulin and Mladost districts regarding public procurement.
WCC, part of the WCC-Democratic Bulgaria coalition that is the second-largest group in the National Assembly and the largest opposition group, has complained of instruments of state being used against it by the ruling majority.
Vassilev, speaking after his election – in which he was the only candidate – said: “I want to thank you very much for your trust. And as I promised you – we will fight to the end. Now is the time to choose the other people who will help in this battle.”
“Because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from this life, it’s that one person can’t go far alone. It takes a team,” Vassilev said.
At the general assembly, a new executive board was elected, including Varna mayor Blagomir Kotsev, currently in long-term custody facing criminal charges which WCC-DB sees as part of the ruling majority’s campaign of repression, and which charges Kotsev denies.
The general assembly was also electing a new body, the ethics committee, in response to shortcomings in vetting personnel chosen to be WCC representatives in public office.
Vassilev, speaking on the September 27 first day of the general assembly, said: “At the moment when we could have become part of the status quo and the distribution of portions – we said ‘No’.
“We could still have had 67 MPs, not gone through elections, not had people in prison, not had anyone slanderomg us, if we had agreed to distribute the regulators and schemes. What they did not expect is that we would say ‘No’ to this offer,” he said, in apparent reference to Magnitsky Act-sanctioned Delyan Peevski’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms-New Beginning and Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF, the key players in the de facto ruling coalition.
“What I can promise you is that we will not give up until we see a rich, fair Bulgaria, in which we are proud of our past, happy in our present and calm about our future,” Vassilev said.
Petkov, speaking on September 27, said: “I deeply hope that anti-corruption will remain embedded in the DNA of our party. I believe that only free people have a place in WCC. We need people who are clever, honest, but also experienced. We need to overcome the feeling of arrogance in us, not ourselves, but in our community”.
WCC-DB MP Bozhidar Bozhanov, co-leader of Yes Bulgaria – a constituent member of DB – said that WCC-DB would not support the motion of no confidence in the government sought by opposition pro-Russian party Vuzrazhdane on the grounds of the water crisis.
“Votes of no confidence should not be devalued,” Bozhanov said, speaking 10 days after the failure of the fifth no-confidence motion in the Zhelyazkov government, in this case tabled by WCC-DB.
“They should be used carefully and well motivated. They should not be trifled with. Otherwise, they serve as an excuse for those in power that they cannot do their job in Parliament,” Bozhanov said.
The water shortage is not something that can be solved in a month, Bozhanov said. He described it as a consequence of “the seizure of the state and the illegitimate exercise of power.”
Bozhanov said that WCC would decide on September 29 whether to support Vuzrazhdane’s call for Natalia Kiselova to step down as Speaker of the National Assembly.
Vuzrazhdane alleges that Kiselova has broken Parliament’s rules of procedure.
Initially, WCC said that it would support Vuzrazhdane in collecting signatures to petition for Kiselova’s ouster, but its coalition partner DB said, in the words of Yes Bulgaria co-leader Ivailo Mirchev, that it would not support Vuzrazhdane in anything.
(Photo of Assen Vassilev via WCC’s Facebook page)
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