2024-03-27 14:25:35
At exactly 11:02 a.m. on March 26, the last bell for the assembly would ring.
With that, the Speaker of the Parliament, Rosen Zhelyazkov, put an end to the meeting, which considered the attempt to form a “Gabriel” cabinet with the mandate of GERB to be a failure. The debate lasted for an hour.
In this last hour for the (non)coalition, which after 9 months of work and 18 days of difficult and strange negotiations never managed to become a real coalition, “Change” and “Democratic Bulgaria” heard twice “No” from the leader of GERB Boyko Borisov.
This is the definitive answer to
the PP-DB’s desperate attempt to start everything
at first, as if the assembly had not broken
with a deafening crash in front of the eyes of the entire public – politicians and electorate, in recent days.
The two sides should return to the option of technical rotation, in which Maria Gabriel simply becomes prime minister instead of Nikolay Denkov, only with the second mandate. In order to avoid further confusion and insults, let’s call it “national” and not PP-DB’s mandate, was the call of the formation.
And the “honor” of declaring all this from the parliamentary rostrum fell to DSB leader Atanas Atanasov. Already with his opening words, the hall burst into laughter – from the first lines of GERB to the last of the opposition. The other co-chairman of the DB – Hristo Ivanov, sits silently in his parliamentary chair.
In fact, the entire debate preceding the vote on Maria Gabriel’s refusal of the mandate turned into an attack against the PP-DB, in which many accusations and many ironic insinuations were made.
It all started with the arrival of the GERB leader half an hour before the start of the extraordinary meeting. Borisov stopped in front of the reporters and wanted to make a retrospective of the negotiations himself. It detailed what had transpired between the two sides over the past two weeks.
At his meeting with Asen Vassilev last Friday, he personally returned the finance minister to the government, although no one from GERB wanted it.
He also accepted Todor Tagarev’s stay as a military man – Ivan Kostov asked him for it
“because of the Atlantic Council”.
I crossed out Zhecho Stankov in my own hand and wrote Rumen Radev – as they wanted, continued Borisov. Then he also removed the minister of e-government from the list “so as not to annoy them”. And he waited for a short answer from Vassilev – “yes” or “no”, as they had agreed.
“In the evening we spoke to see how he was after the accident he had, and he told me that they wanted other people for the interior ministry and for the electronic one. I reminded him again of our conversation about a short yes or no answer. We only talk here for government, if you understand me.
Gen. Atanasov called me in the evening, I told him the same thing, proposing, I think, Mrs. Dundakova, who is the Deputy Minister of the Interior, to become the Minister of the Interior, and a person from “Liddle” for the e-governance,” issued the kitchen of negotiations Borisov.
He admitted in passing that Kalin Stoyanov may indeed have chosen him with Kiril Petkov. But it broke out that the remaining four key figures in the Ministry of Internal Affairs are of the PP-DB.
And that he will not allow “the systems in the security and justice services to be dismantled without deep consideration and implementation, so that there are no questions now as with the constitution – which I and GERB have only supported what Hristo Ivanov wrote”.
And then it started “telephone, telephone, telephone” –
Borisov laughed and promised one day to tell where the talk came from.
And he has already seriously explained about the calls in question: “Something unacceptable, really exposing Bulgaria. Because respected people are starting, including from non-EU member states, but due to my great respect for these people, I will not mention their names, they are calling on behalf of Mr. Mr. Petkov to press me for the position of interior minister. Ministers from other countries. We have finally made our decision to protect the institutions, the people, the democracy”.
After telling all this, Boyko Borisov gave his first “No” through the media. “It’s like I’m speaking in Pakistani,” he exclaimed when asked directly if they could reunite for a second term.
The official PP-DB offer itself (which, as it turned out, was discussed at the meeting of their group the night before), sounded half an hour later in the hall.
“Today is a cloudy day for Bulgarian democracy, and could the sun break through these clouds? It depends on this hall. Or there will be a storm with hail,” began his speech, DSB leader Atanas Atanasov. In rotation, he was to become the head of the parliament. After reading the offer, he asked that Borisov’s answer come by the day the president decides to hand over the second mandate, as the nominee for prime minister should take the folder.
Apart from laughter from the hall, Atanasov was sent from the rostrum with ironic shouts of “More, more”, and the whole debate passed into mockery from the opposition to PP-DB for praying to the leader of GERB for a government.
Public political harakiri, said Cornelia Ninova.
For no one
we do not pray, we comply with the opinion of the people – they do not want elections,
insisted Atanasov.
“Vazrazhdane” announced that this is no longer the bottom, and PP-DB went down to the “basement of the bottom”.
And here Kiril Petkov excitedly took the floor to help. With a tone and gesticulation that once again provoked derisive reactions from the opposition.
“It will be the biggest mistake if you define what you heard as a request. Don’t you understand, people, that in politics, as in life, the most important thing is to keep your word! Do it not out of fear, greed, but out of sense of duty,” he addressed the deputies. Because of their reactions, Petkov got even more fired up, explaining why the agreement on changes in the services, appointments in the regulators and falling of investigative secrecy before parliamentary inquiry commissions was important.
For 30 years, the services have been working for anything but the citizens. For every spy caught in our country, the information came from other services, the PP leader said.
“We have not achieved what we need for a normal European country”, Petkov finally exclaimed in his attempt to convince the previous partners to continue. And the achievement started from the kept word – 9 months ago, a rotation of only the prime ministers was agreed upon.
The most humiliating pose is to pray to the one you arrest to keep you in power, commented Stanislev Balabanov from ITN and announced that harakiri has now become “haraKiro”.
GERB remained silent in the plenary hall. The official response came three hours later in the form of a letter distributed by the party’s press office. It was signed by Boyko Borisov and his deputies in the group, who were in the negotiating team – Temenuzka Petkova, Denitsa Sacheva and Raya Nazaryan.
This was the second categorical “No” from the leader of GERB.
Borisov himself, as well as the chairman of the DPS Delyan Peevski signified
were absent from the vote And Maria Gabriel did not go to the National Assembly while her refusal to be prime minister and to propose names of ministers were discussed.
With 226 votes in favor and only one abstention, the parliament voted the first mandate as unsuccessful. And in the afternoon, the president announced that he was waiting for the PP-DB for the second one the very next day. After the refusal of GERB to Rumen Radev, it is expected that Nikolay Denkov will go as prime minister candidate and immediately return the folder to him.
Last night, however, there were hesitations in the group – Asen Vasilev was in favor of returning the moment, Kiril Petkov hesitated, and it was difficult for DB to part with the hopes that if they give each other time to talk, something can change.
If the mandate is returned today, the fast track to early elections remains, so that they are a week ahead of the European ones on June 9.