The only way for something good to happen for Bulgaria is for GERB to support the second cabinet-forming mandate of Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB), GERB leader Boyko Borissov said here on Monday. He was speaking at a meeting with MPs of his parliamentary group livestreamed on Facebook. “Let them think that we were weak, that I cannot negotiate: I know that in the long-term this is the best for Bulgaria,” he said, referring to an joint announcement by GERB and CC-DB earlier on Monday that they will propose a second-mandate government with a prime minister rotating every nine months, starting with Nikolay Denkov of Continue the Change followed by Mariya Gabriel of GERB.
“Is Mariya Gabriel’s ego, our ego, more important than a stable government for at least 18 months so as to elaborate the two budgets [for 2023 and 2024], to start the National Recovery and Resilience Plan and to move forward?” Borissov asked. There is a time for quarreling, he said. “A very difficult decision for them, a very difficult for us,” he noted, adding that both political forces will sustain damage. “However, even should GERB become 5%, we will be a true European party which does the right things, such as counter-corruption, economic growth, income raise, and people’s welfare,” he said. “Two years of chaos and ruin are clear to see. If I and [Continue the Change co-leader] Kiril [Petkov] lose, it will not be fatal, but that is our chance as a state: to control each other,” Borissov said further.
He assured GERB’s activists that the party has strong support after the decision taken earlier on Monday. “We will continue the talks with CC-DB, we made a big step back, we conceded, we did not act stubbornly, we understood them, Mariya went and returned the mandate [unfulfilled to President Radev] and we did what I had suggested before the mandates started being handed out,” Borissov also said.
He went on to say that CC-DB had raised the matter of machine voting. “We reached an agreement, let machines be used, but we should think about how to make the election process clean: whether with scanning devices [or not], but there should not be corrected tally sheets,” he noted. Talks will be held on the matter as well as on the budget deficit of 3%, he added.
Borissov thanked Democratic Bulgaria co-leader Hristo Ivanov for holding a meeting with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms on Monday in search of a majority for amendments to the Constitution, which require support from at least 160 MPs in the 240-seat Parliament.
The GERB leader expressed the hope that Gabriel and Denkov will find common language; there are five or six goals that can be achieved immediately. “We might disappear, is there a point in GERB [existing] if this party lacks support from Europe, from America, from the entire democratic community?” he asked, adding that the same applies to his colleagues.
Gabriel described the talks as tense at times but “we did not allow to be accused of behind-the-scenes deals on the votes we are short on [to have majority in Parliament].” In her words, the second cabinet-forming mandate will be a national one and will serve for the formation of a stable government around which a majority for amending the Constitution will also be formed. She explained that in the first nine months of the rotational government, she will be the only deputy prime minister as well as minister of foreign affairs, and in the next nine months she will switch places with Denkov.
/RY/
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