site.btaUPDATED PM Designate Denkov: President Has No Right to Say Whether Second Mandate Should Be Fulfilled

„I don't think the President has the right to say that the second [government-forming] mandate should not be fulfilled“, Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria’s (CC-DB) Prime Minister Designate Nikolay Denkov said on bTV on Tuesday.

Head of State Rumen Radev handed the second government-forming exploratory to Denkov on Monday. In front of the representatives of the CC-DB, the President said that the mandate was already discredited and urged them to reconsider its expediency.

According to Denkov, the president did not act correctly by issuing this statement: "I went there elected by a parliamentary groups. I am not a caretaker minister so he cannot tell me what to do. I am coming there with a mandate to carry out. If anybody is going to tell me, 'This mandate must not be fulfilled”, it is the parliamentary groups. That's the institutional approach and I think he broke it in this case," Denkov stated.

“His job in this case is to hand the second mandate, if he has any comments, to say them, but I definitely don't think it's his job to say ‘don't fulfil it,’” Denkov pointed out.

He also commented on Mariya Gabriel’s Tuesday statement that the negotiations on forming a government between CC-DB and GERB-UDF can continue only if the format, the composition and the personalities in a possible government are reconsidered.

Denkov said the forming of a cabinet is not a goal in itself. It has to solve the problems that people are interested in. He pointed out that a regular government is also a condition to have a working parliament to adopt the state budget.

He added that an expert cabinet is something that should and can be thought about.

"For me it is important, if we are going in the direction of an expert government, that the expert government is acceptable, in this case for both people who have the main political responsibility, both on Mariya Gabriel's side and on my side, that it is clear that it can function," the CC-DB PM Designate said.

“It is important to define whether we are talking about an expert cabinet with Gabriel and myself as the main political faces or whether we are moving towards some more balanced political cabinet, which means that they [GERB-UDF] will want other faces. But whatever decision we make, we have to go through a decision of our councils because that is a change in the mandate with which we started these negotiations,” Denkov explained.