site.btaContinue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria to Return Second Exploratory Government-forming Mandate Unfulfilled

Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) will return an unfulfilled second government-forming mandate to President Rumen Radev. CC-DB will return the folder with the exploratory mandate empty, CC-DB Co-Chair Kiril Petkov told bTV on Wednesday morning.

"Nikolay Denkov will take the folder, we will be together with the other leaders. […] Our last attempt to keep our agreement and show that we will not throw the country into chaos was rejected by GERB. From this point of view, we will return it [the folder] empty," Petkov stressed.

"What we tried to show is what it means to keep your word and what it means to do something with a sense of duty. We did it. We got another set of shambles, seven pages of made-up texts from GERB, and these people have shown that they cannot keep their word. We did not expect it and now we go with a clear conscience to return the second mandate [unfulfilled]," he explained.

President Rumen Radev will hand the second exploratory mandate to CC-DB at 3 p.m. on Wednesday. This follows from a resolution by Parliament on Tuesday that the first mandate, offered to GERB-UDF Prime Minister-designate Mariya Gabriel has been unsuccessful. In a final proposal, CC-DB offered "a common national mandate" in which GERB would name a Prime Minister that would be acceptable for CC-DB as well and form a government with the same ministers as in the Nikolay Denkov Cabinet. GERB rejected the proposal as inadequate.

According to the Constitution, CC-DB have a 7-day deadline to propose the composition of the Council of Ministers. If they fail to do so, the President will present the third exploratory mandate to a parliamentary political force of his choice.