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“To date, the formation of a Council of Ministers is not possible”, announced the leader of GERB Boyko Borisov on Tuesday evening. It is not clear if he is bluffing or if he really thinks so, and if so – why? Just a few hours earlier, GERB successfully concluded the first round of government negotiations.
On Monday, the “contactors” from GERB (as “Colonel” Nikolay Markov called the negotiation team named by Boyko Borisov) met with the contactors from DPS. After the conversation, both sides showed moderate satisfaction, as if to show how happy they are that the PP-DB will no longer interfere with them and annoy them by constantly talking about corruption, urgent reforms, setting conditions and preconditions in the negotiations. making the two bigwigs in Bulgarian politics feel dumb, though not for long.
On Tuesday, the same three representatives of GERB (Denitsa Sacheva, Temenuzka Petkova and Raya Nazaryan) met with “There is a people” – the second and last party in this parliament that wants to negotiate with them for a government. As we understand, the talks have been constructive. The negotiating teams shared with each other what their priorities were, nothing specific was discussed, but the door for a new meeting is open.
Even before the elections, but mostly after them, most observers pointed to ITN as the logical third partner in the government. And not only because with them GERB and DPS will achieve a comfortable majority of 131 votes. Since its first entry into the parliament three years ago, ITN has appeared as a reserve party of the DPS, so in this case too it would do what Delyan Peevski says – for example, to support a GERB-DPS cabinet without participating in it.
However, the presence of a third player has an important image significance for Borisov, for to blur the contours of his apparent alliance with Peevski. The same is the purpose of the verbal flings used to describe the coming government. It would be on “shared responsibility”. I “expert”.
And why not just a government? Coalition, what would it actually be? Wasn’t it GERB who kept attacking the PP-DB for the previous “Denkov-Gabriel” government, for the fact that the second political force forms a cabinet with the mandate of the first, because of the extravagant rotation formula, for calling it an “assemblage” and what not , only to escape from the truth that they rule together with GERB.
And the PP-DB wanted to cover up this truth in a panic, because the voters voted their trust to dismantle the “Borisov-Peevski” corruption model, and not to leave it in power and legitimize it.
The hour of truth for the PP-DB came on June 9, when they realized that they had lost 300,000 voters and had collapsed to the third political force. And the one who during the campaign was pointed to as the master of the chicken coop that the state has become, achieved his star moment of revenge. DPS became the second political force for the first time since its establishment.
This somewhat answers the question why it was necessary for the GERB to dismantle the rotating government, which was practically theirs, right before the prime minister from the GERB took office.
Delyan Peevski announced during the pre-election campaign what will happen after the elections: “We will decide who can rule, who can be prime minister, who can be ministers and we will decide whether we want to give our support or not. We are not waiting for anyone to invite us for anything.”.
Generally, Borisov doesn’t have much choice, since like Peevski he has already made up his mind, that DPS will manage with the mandate of GERB. Unfortunately for Borisov, this time PP-DB will not participate in the performance of “shared responsibility” and run around the stage, conveniently shifting the focus from the real conductor of power.
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