The pro-Russian Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) will receive the third and final mandate from the president on Monday to form a regular government in the EU’s poorest state mired in political crisis, making this the last opportunity to form a regular government before going to new early elections.
If the country goes to the polls, it would be the fifth vote in just two years. Before the BSP, the two largest parties in the country failed – GERB and We Continue the Change.
Since the elections in April 2021, President Radev has every time handed the third mandate to the Bulgarian Socialist Party, which has so far failed in its attempts to form a government. In recent weeks, parties have predicted that the best chance of forming a regular government is if the president hands over the mandate to pro-European Democratic Bulgaria. The reason for these forecasts was GERB’s promises to provide support for Democratic Bulgaria.
GERB has so far rejected the possibility of supporting a government proposed by the Socialist Party. “We will do everything within the power of the Bulgarian Socialist Party to form a government. In a time of crisis, war, inflation, there must be a government – this is our appeal to the other parties to the National Assembly,” said the deputy chairman of the Socialists and former foreign minister Christian Vigenin.
He explained that the BSP will find the necessary compromises if there is a political will to elect a government in the parliament.
“If there is none, there is no point in engaging in conversations with anyone,” added Vigenin. The Bulgarian Socialist Party is the successor of the Bulgarian Communist Party, which was at the head of the totalitarian regime in the country until 1989. The party remains strongly pro-Russian and has consistently voted against providing military aid to Ukraine.
Two months ago, BSP voted together with GERB and DPS for the practical cancellation of machine voting in Bulgaria and for the return of paper ballots as the main tool for holding elections in the country.
Because of this, the three parties have been called the “paper coalition” by their political opponents and analysts. Paper ballots have for years been pointed to as the main tool for buying electoral votes and controlling voting among the marginal layers of Bulgarian society, which has been repeatedly criticised by Bulgaria’s European partners
(Krassen Nikolov | EURACTIV.bg)
Source: euractiv.com
