"We Continue the Change" withdraw the candidacy of Nikola Minchev for Speaker of Parliament

"We Continue the Change" withdraws the candidacy of Nikola Minchev and will not nominate a candidate for Speaker of the National Assembly tomorrow, the chairman of the parliamentary group of the party, Andrey Gyurov, announced at a briefing in Parliament on October 19.

"We gave a chance to all parliamentary groups to unite around the most worthy candidate nominated by “We Continue the Change” - Mr. Nikola Minchev. In the second round of voting he won the most votes and despite everything we could not elect a Speaker. As there was an accusation that we were preventing the possibility for making a choice, the parliamentary group decided at its meeting tomorrow morning not to nominate a candidate and to give the others the opportunity to hold a vote," Gyurov said.

The party's co-chair, Assen Vassile, said that as opposition, “We Continue the Change” party would vote against the nomination of Rosen Zhelyazkov from GERB and at the moment they have not decided whether to support the candidate of another party. Vassilev commented that GERB has no plan how to govern the country after they have overthrown the “We Continue the Change” government.

"They tabled a no-confidence vote that brought down the government, stopped the work of Parliament and what we see now is that they have no plan to govern the country. They executed a plan to destroy a government that was so difficult to put together without having a plan of what to offer as an alternative."

According to him, we are in an unprecedented situation where the winner of the elections cannot muster an agreement to elect a Speaker of the National Assembly, let alone a cabinet:

"Bringing down the government of “We Continue the Change” and your only plan to form a cabinet being to ask for support from that same party is cowardly. We don't want to plunge the country into a constitutional crisis and that's why we are taking a step back. We have clearly stated that we will not support them in either a secret or an open vote," Vassilev said.

In his words, a rotating chairmanship would be highly inefficient and it is normal for the parliament to have one Speaker (referring to the Democratic Bulgaria suggestion that the nominees to Parliament's chairmanship of the two largest political forces, GERB-UDF and “We Continue the Change, could take turns chairing the Parliament).

Clearly, we are showing what it means to be a constructive opposition, Kiril Petkov also said.

"It means that even when we believe we have the best candidate, we take a step back. But all our voters should be absolutely sure that our election promises will be kept, we will not make any backstage deals either. Everything we do, you will see it on the screens tomorrow," he said.

Unprecedented: MPs failed to elect a Speaker of the Parliament

Today, October 19, Bulgaria’s 48th National Assembly failed to elect a Speaker after two procedures with two repeat votes, each, creating an unprecedented situation. After two votes in two rounds of voting and multiple breaks - no agreement was reached. Five parties put forward their own candidates for the post of the Speaker and this effectively scattered the votes with no possibility of any of them getting a majority.

After the plenary sitting, Democratic Bulgaria made a proposal that the chairmanship be rotated between the candidates of the two largest parliamentary groups - Rosen Zhelyazkov of GERB-UDF and Nikola Minchev of “We Continue the Change”. Later GERB announced at a press conference at its party headquarters that they would support the proposal.

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