Bulgaria Heads for Early Elections after Third and Final Government-Forming Mandate Is Returned

President Rumen Radev on January 16 handed the third and final exploratory mandate to form a government in this Parliament. He decided to give it to the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF).

ARF immediately returned the mandate unfulfilled.

“Not by chance did I choose to hand the third mandate to ARF. ARF has been subjected to brutal pressure from its own offspring, and you probably understand better than anyone else the flaws of today’s model of governance. Your members and supporters have been under pressure, and even today they continue to be influenced in various ways. I am handing you this mandate also as a symbol of national unity and as a stand against any attempt by self-serving politicians to sow ethnic tension, for which there is no ground whatsoever in Bulgaria and which serves only their narrow party and, above all, personal interests. Please state your position – whether you will accept the mandate and seek a majority within the 51st National Assembly, or whether we will move towards resolving this crisis through the holding of snap parliamentary elections,” President Radev said.

In turn, the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms announced that it was returning the third mandate unfulfilled.

“Thank you for the gesture and for the recognition of our steadfast resistance to the phenomenon of the ‘captured state’. On behalf of the APS parliamentary group, we accept your decision to hand us the third exploratory mandate to form a government as a very responsible challenge for us and, of course, as a gesture and an assessment. We have walked a very difficult path, but our parliamentary group has a sensitive understanding of what we heard on the streets of Bulgaria in December. Because we did not just hear it, we lived it, as this public response for us began a year and a half earlier. We were the first to raise our voices about the phenomenon that was emerging, and when we realised that this assessment had become national, that society had seen what was happening, we stood alongside the people in the squares. Consciously and responsibly, our parliamentary group authorised me to return the third exploratory mandate unfulfilled, so that through our collective efforts we can deliver honest, free, transparent and democratic elections,” said Hayri Sadakov, chairman of the APS parliamentary group.

photos by Dessislava Kulelieva, BNT

“We are going to elections,” President Rumen Radev concluded.

This outcome follows Wednesday’s developments, when PP–DB received and immediately returned the second mandate unfulfilled. According to the second-largest political force in the National Assembly, there is no possibility of forming a reformist majority in the current parliament.

On Monday, GERB–UDF had also returned the first mandate without forming a government.