site.btaUPDATED GERB Turns Down CC-DB Last Offer for Government

GERB-UDF Tuesday turned down the final offer of their former power-sharing partner Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) for forming a government. "GERB-UDF is not going to participate in attempts to form a cabinet on a second or third mandate. Let Bulgarian people decide via elections who and how should run Bulgaria," reads a statement undersigned by GERB leader Boyko Borissov and the party's deputy floor leaders Temenuzhka Petkova, Denitsa Sacheva and Raya Nazaryan, and made public by the party press office.

That practically paves the way to early national elections, which will be this country's sixth since April 2021. 

CC-DB's proposal was that the two group's floor leaders should sign an agreement setting out guarantees for reforms in the judiciary, the regulators and security services, with clear implementation deadlines; a prime minister who is a mutually acceptable figure nominated by GERB-UDF; and the current structure of the Council of Ministers remaining the same as in the Nikolay Denkov government.

In its reply to the CC-DB offer, GERB offer their side of the story about the government talks with a detailed account of all the compromises they made in the name of the national interests. "But that constant pressure on us, this political extortion had to end. And the end came with dignity as [Prime Minister-designate] Mariya Gabriel submitted a statement to Parliament and the GERB-UDF group that she withdrew from the efforts to form a government," the statement says.

"Today it is cynical to be threatened with the imperfections of the revised Constitution in the part concerning the caretaker government - be threatened by the very same people who prepared the revisions and put brutal pressure on all members of the legal committee and the entire Parliament to have it adopted before the end of last year," Borissov said:

GERB-UDF finds it inadequate to propose using the second mandate - CC-DB's - with the participation of GERB-UDF and its Prime Minister-designate Mariya Gabriel or Parliament leader Rosen Zhelyazkov. "After they intentionally torpedoed the fragile balance there was, trampled on the confidence we tried to build with them, and then they tried to put us in the conditions of heavy international pressure, CC-DG cannot expect of us to partake in this ruthless abuse of the just expectations of the Bulgarian people for security, stability and dignity in their life in Bulgaria," the statement goes.

As nobody has indicated any support for a CC-DB government, GERB's decision means that the procedure will come to a third mandate that the President will offer to one of the smaller parliamentary parties of his choice, and BSP for Bulgaria and MRF have already said that they would not even try, and Vazrazhdane said that while they are ready to propose a government, they are aware that it would not be supported by the legislature.