Bulgaria Die-Hard Rightist Warns of Looming Snap Polls
Domestic | February 2, 2011, Wednesday // 13:34| viewsAn election poster of Bulgarian GERB party leader Boyko Borisov on a monument where it reads 'A man could live well but dies at the end and after him another one is born...' in the town of Dobrinishte some 180km from Sofia, Bulgaria. Photo by EPA/BGNES
The government's penchant to steer clear of scandals by burying its head in the sand will trigger early elections in Bulgaria, forecasts the leader of a right-wing party, only until recently an ally of the cabinet.
"Just as you run away from certain topics, you can suddenly end up in an early elections race," Ivan Kostov, head of the conservative Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, which is now part of the Blue Coalition, said in parliament.
His statement came in response to the decision of the parliamentary majority not to establish a temporary inquiry committee to probe the scandal with the dead baby in the central town of Gorna Oryahovitsa.
The spectre of early elections has started to pop in and out of the war of words on the political battlefield, with supporters of the ruling party GERB saying that it has no political alternative and opponents striking back that things can't get worse.
Latest polls show that no more than three parties - center-right GERB, Socialist BSP and ethnic Turkish DPS, are strong enough to enter Bulgaria's parliament if general elections were held today.
The far-right Ataka, a firm ally of the current government, and the right-wing Blue Coalition, which has repeatedly criticized it for lack of expertise and dodging painful reforms, will not manage to pass the 4% threshold and will go by the board.
The center-right government of Boyko Borisov's party GERB now has 117 of a total of 240 seats in the unicameral chamber and governs with the support of Ataka, a fervently nationalist group, and the conservative Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB) of former premier Ivan Kostov. These parties have no ministers in the government.
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