The President of Bulgaria, Rumen Radev, on Monday handed over to the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party the mandate to form the new government, after nearly two months of consultations after the October legislative elections ended without a clear majority.
GERB’s leader, former Prime Minister Boiko Borisov, said on Sunday that, after receiving the mandate, two options are open: to become prime minister again or to propose a ‘neutral’ person who will propose a ‘framework agreement’ that will be accepted by all parties, as reported by the daily ‘Dnevnik’.
The party will have seven days to try to achieve the necessary support among the rest of the formations so that the Government that it assembles receives the support of the Parliament, although so far Borisov has not managed to guarantee himself a majority of seats that support his project.
In fact, Radev himself advanced on November 21 that he will be forced to call early elections for March in case all the attempts to form a government fail, although he acknowledged that new elections could have a low turnout.
The president reproached the Bulgarian Parliament for failing to reach agreements on issues, such as the recovery and sustainability plan and other important laws. «This is not what citizens expect,» he said, before arguing that «there are no small or big parties (…) because the responsibility is common.»
In the elections, held on October 2, GERB won with more than 25 percent of the votes, ahead of the formation of the current prime minister, Kiril Petkov, We Continue for Change, which collected 20.2 percent of the support.
The elections were called following a motion of confidence lost in June by the Petkov-led coalition after the withdrawal of one of its partners from the government, which led the Prime Minister, who had been in office for half a year, to call early elections, the fourth in a year and a half.
