Bulgarian Parliament Decides to Rerun Confidence Vote

Front-bench MPs supportive of the GERB cabinet stride the halls of the Bulgarian Parliament. Photo by BGNES

Opposition MPs have demanded that the Parliament recast the vote of confidence in the GERB cabinet, based on difficulties on the first roll-call procedure.

According to the Parliament's internal rules, the request has to be accepted and Parliament is imminent to vote again.

At first, the idea was to re-vote using the regular electronic vote method, but an intervention of socialist front-bench MP Maya Manolova forced Speaker Tsetska Tsacheva to call again the roll-call method, since that was the decision taken by the Parliament for the confidence vote in the first place.

During the first vote, it took the National Assembly some 20 minutes to count the first roll-call votes, as different counters gave different results.

The official result from the first vote was determined to be 141 MPs in favor of the government, 72 against, and 13 abstentions.

MPs from opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party are also criticising GERB Speaker of Parliament Tsetska Tsacheva of not conducting the sitting in accordance to the house's internal rules.

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