In search of support: PM nominee Mariya Gabriel met with the parties in Parliament, WCC-DB did not attend

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21:03, 11.05.2023

Mariya Gabriel, nominated for Prime Minister by the largest parliamentary group GERB-UDF, together with representatives of the coalition on May 11 held talks with representatives of the parties in the National Assembly throughout the day in search of support for forming a cabinet. The negotiations were with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and “There is Such a People” (TISP). The first meeting with “We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria” (WCC-DB) did not take place because the co-leaders of the collation, Kiril Petkov and Assen Vassilev, were in Prague.

The keyword of today's meetings was dialogue between the parliamentary groups, Mariya Gabriel told GERB-UDF early this morning.

"First of all, a plan for a way out of the political crisis and a working government, normalisation of the work of the institutions. Second, stabilisation of public finances and adoption of the budget. Third, justice reform, adoption of the basic laws, a mechanism for investigating the attorney general. The first thing that the Minister of Justice in my government will do is to submit to the Supreme Judicial Council a request for the dismissal of Ivan Geshev from the post of Prosecutor General for undermining the prestige of the judiciary," Gabriel said.

Today, however, a dialogue with the second largest coalition WCC-DB did not take place. The invitation for a meeting was at 10:00, but yesterday afternoon, in an email to the media, WCC-DB announced that due to the absence of the co-chairs of WCC, Kiril Petkov and Assen Vassilev, from the country, the meeting was moved to late afternoon on Friday.

However, after that GERB-UDF, again with an email to the media, announced that enough leaders from the coalition WCC-DB are in Bulgaria, pointing out academician Nikolai Denkov, Hristo Ivanov, Atanas Atanasov and therefore they will expect the coalition representatives at 10:00. The next meetings with MRF, BSP and TISP were held as scheduled.

Exactly at 10:00, the chairwoman of the GERB-UDF group, Desislava Atanasova, and her colleagues from the group entered the “West” Hall without Mariya Gabriel among them. The representatives of WCC-DB did not turn up, and earlier on the air of BNT acad. Nikolai Denkov explained why:

"Our interpretation is that for them this meeting is pro forma, if they want a real meeting of leaders, we should all be here, as we have proposed. Let me give an interpretation that if we go without Assen Vassilev and Kiril Petkov, they will start asking why they are not attending, what the reason is. So, let's be clear, a meeting like this is serious enough and we want all the leaders of our coalition to be there."

In the meeting with the MRF, Mariya Gabriel again outlined in detail the 10 main priorities for the governance of the country and the need to form a regular and responsible government. From the words of Yordan Tsonev of MRF, both in the hall and later in front of the media, it became clear that his party supports Gabriel's nomination, and in many of the priorities she announced, including the judicial reform and the removal of Ivan Geshev from the post of chief prosecutor, he recognises long-standing goals of the MRF.

"We even told Ms Gabriel that we in the MRF think it suits Bulgaria to have a woman prime minister in a regular cabinet in difficult times, because we in the MRF, when we have difficult tasks to do, we turn to women. We have heard the priorities, I can tell you that some of these priorities, like the green economy, like high technology, like justice reform, are priorities in our 2017 programme," said Yordan Tsonev of MRF.

After hearing from Maria Gabriel the main priorities for governance, Georgi Svilensky of the BSP described the approach to the format of this meeting as wrong because, according to him, it should have involved the leaders of the two parties - Boyko Borissov (GERB) and Kornelia Ninova (BSP). He also recalled that he had recently said that Borissov would name a candidate for prime minister and would hide and insisted on more clarity on the government issue.

"Let's leave the empty boxes for Mr Borissov to entertain while he decides whether he will take the initiative, because such talks about such a responsible job should be led by the leaders of the parties. The important thing is to answer what government, with what support, in what timeframe, with what priorities. BSP will not participate in government just for the sake of participating in government. The Bulgarian public expects from us clear commitments, support, education, healthcare, social policy - these are our main priorities", said Georgi Svilensky of BSP.

"They will be very clear. What kind of government we want - pro-European, with a clear profile of people who support the priorities around which we have united. Pro-European with experts with clear priorities and clear responsibilities. Of course, the next questions are when, what, and you have finally opened up the biggest perspective - we have topics on which we can unite," said Maria Gabriel.

After the meeting, BSP did not answer media questions. In the meeting with the PM nominee, the smallest parliamentary group, TISP stressed that forcefully imposed solutions cannot succeed and defined the dialogue at political and at expert level as important.

"It is very important which people will implement these priorities, but we can eventually come to an agreement only with clearly outlined priorities and concrete measures, including deadlines for the implementation of specific things. We need to be very precise and clear to the public, so that the majority of the Bulgarian Parliament can get behind these concrete measures and have support for this eventual government that you will lead. At the moment, you are a candidate for Prime Minister without support. In order to get it from the Parliament, you need to seek agreement between more political parties," said Toshko Yordanov of TISP.

There are similarities with the first political force on how Bulgaria should be brought out of the severe financial crisis, TISP said after the meeting and reiterated that they expect more specifics on priorities.

In conclusion, after all the meetings, GERB-UDF said that they were moderately optimistic about the success of a cabinet with a first mandate and Prime Minister nominee Mariya Gabriel.