site.btaUPDATED MECh Singles Out Andrey Gurov as Sole Viable Caretaker PM Candidate, Accuses President of Deliberately Dragging Out Consultations

Moral, Unity, Honour (MECh) party Chair Radostin Vasilev singled out Bulgarian National Bank Deputy Governor Andrey Gurov as "the sole viable candidate" for the caretaker prime minister position, "because he is the only one who can break away from the [MRF - New Begining Floor Leader Delyan] Peevski and [GERB-UDF Floor Leader Boyko] Borissov model". President Iliana Iotova held a consultation with the parliamentary group on Tuesday as part of the procedure to appoint a caretaker prime minister. 

"The MECh parliamentary group will no longer take part in the consultations because of their meaninglessness and because you are deliberately dragging out these pointless consultations, possibly to give President Rumen Radev (2017–2026) time to form a political party and organize himself," Vasilev added, after which the parliamentary group’s representatives walked out without waiting to hear Iotova's response.

These consultations could have been conducted very quickly, the party leader argued.

At the beginning of the meeting, Vasilev stated that Iotova had a moral obligation to resign together with Rumen Radev after he stepped down as president. “The legislator who drafted the Constitution did not envisage a president resigning in order to form his own party,” Vasilev said. According to him, public perception is that Radev used the presidential institution to create a party, while Iotova is using her position for a future presidential campaign.

“I do not want you to feel offended, but today we should have been preparing for presidential and parliamentary elections, not for you to be conducting a campaign from the presidential office and seeking confirmation of a single candidacy from parliamentary parties that failed to nominate a caretaker prime minister,” Vasilev added.

He said he was skeptical that the President could conduct a genuine and impartial campaign.

Vasilev added that his concerns were heightened by photographs of Iotova with individuals linked to the State Security of the former People’s Republic of Bulgaria, as well as by her close ties to “figures such as Nikolay Valkanov - vice president of Multigroup [a former controversial private conglomerate of insurance companies, banks, trading firms, oil businesses, gambling casinos and private security companies]."

He also noted that Iotova served as a spokesperson for the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) in 1997, “when a large part of Bulgarians were starving”, and that several days ago she was photographed with Kiril Dobrev, whom Vasilev described as “the liquidator of BSP and a representative of Delyan Peevski within BSP”.

According to Vasilev, the President, Sofia Mayor Vassil Terziev, as well as former and current leaders of the democratic community, should have been barred from holding such positions in order to restore justice in society. He further commented that Bulgarian society has long been deceived through various regroupings of an oligarchic-totalitarian model. Vasilev added that individuals with a heavy nomenklatura past continue to occupy senior positions in the state, forcing society to live in the hope that this model will eventually be dismantled through yet another reshuffling.