Prime Minister Kiril Petkov: A minority government is much better than having our arms twisted

We are ready for a minority government. A minority government is much better than a government that is under pressure and attempts for its arms to be twisted, Prime Minister Kiril Petkov told a news conference on June 8 after it became clear that "There is Such a People" (TISP) is leaving the 4-party coalition.

Slavi Trifonov: I withdraw the ministers of "There is Such a People" and put an end to this coalition

In the last week, Minister Grozdan Karadzhov has asked for an unprecedented increase in the budget of the Ministry of Regional Development by BGN 3.6 billion, the Prime Minister announced.

"This is on top of an already existing amount of 2.2 billion, which is an unprecedented budget from the very beginning. He demanded that this money be paid to the same companies that have been investigated by Minister of Interior, Boyko Rashkov in recent years for abuse. When we said that this update was not to supplement the budgets of the Ministry of Regional Development, but to increase pensions, to help working families, to reduce the prices of petrol, diesel and VAT on bread, we received a response that would not agree unless we gave these funds to the ministry and they went to these construction companies.

The first conflict with “There is Such a People” arose after the coalition partners failed to give the firstly requested BGN 1.1 billion for roads.

"Since then, we have seen that 80 - 90% of these constructions are not minor road repairs, but real construction works done under the pretext that they are minor repairs," Petkov said.

And more - "We Continue the Change" have proposed the Minister of Interior Boyko Rashkov to head the anti-corruption commision, but they have received a refusal from "There is Such a People".

"The anti-corruption commission has been managed for six months now by Mr Tsatsarov's deputy. We proposed to put in place a man with an unprecedented reputation in terms of fighting against corruption - and that is Minister Rashkov. We said that Minister Rashkov is the person who should head the anti-corruption body and start the real investigations.instead of delaying and wondering. What we got as a response from TISP - we simply disagree - no arguments, no nothing. For six months now we have been dragging our feet on the law on the anti-corruption commission. They did not agree, they were not ready, it had to be discussed. We are not going to discuss any more - we are tabling the draft law on the anti-corruption commission tomorrow."

At the moment, "We Continue the Change" has no proposals for replacements for the ministers, that were pulled out from the coalition.

"We have no specific names to share, but we guarantee that any name we put forward will have to abide by the same high standards that our ministers abide by. This coalition needs 12 more MPs to back it. Our coalition partners – Bulgarian Socialist Party and Democratic Bulgaria have already declared their full support for these reforms," said Kiril Petkov.

"We Continue the Change" are ready for a minority government, but will not spend a single lev without control, Petkov said.

"Today is a day of the water splittng - you can be on the side of corruption, on the side of the mafia, on the side of people who use public resources to put it in their own pocket, or we can have a principled position where every lev is accounted for," the PM insisted.