Bulgarian Opposition to Go for New No Confidence Vote in July

BSP leader Stanishev (left) and DPS deputy head Mestan have announced a new no confidence vote will be initiated in July. Photo by BGNES

After it unsurprisingly failed to topple the Borisov Cabinet in Friday's no confidence vote, the Bulgarian leftist and centrist opposition has announced plans to go for a new no confidence motion within a month.

The government of the center-right party GERB survived the no confidence vote on economic crisis policies initiated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) with 124 MPs against, 70 in favor, and 2 abstaining.

The Cabinet made it with the votes of the 117 GERB MPs and nine independents (former members of the conservative party RZS and the nationalist Ataka), while its traditional earlier allies, Ataka with 17 MPs and the Blue Coalition MPs, did not take part at all in the voting.

Almost immediately after the no confidence motion, second for the Borisov Cabinet since it took over in mid 2009, failed, the Socialists and DPS gave a new conference announcing that the next no confidence vote will be in July 2011 citing "the failure of the government's overall policies" as a reason.

Both BSP and DPS criticized the rightist Blue Coalition and the nationalist party Ataka for deciding no to take part in the vote on Friday.

"A new no confidence vote will show who stands where in the Bulgarian political spectrum because the Blue Coalition creates the impression of a substitute player who is waiting for the main player to get an injury and to replace him. This is hidden support for the Borisov Cabinet. The Blue Coalition might not be standing up for the government, but they also don't want to see it collapse," declared DPS deputy head Lyutvi Mestan.

He thinks that by being absent from the vote, the nationalist party Ataka, the informal ally of the GERB Cabinet, wants to raise the price for its support.

Mestan explicitly point out that in 2009 the government of Boyko Borisov had the support of 162 MPs (back then consisting of the GERB party, Ataka, the Blue Coalition and the marginal conservatives from RZS – editor's note), while today it got the support of only 124, or 38 MPs fewer.

The leader of Bulgarian Socialist Party, former PM Sergey Stanishev, even suggested that the Blue Coalition – which made it clear it would not support the no confidence vote initiated by the Socialists, or, as it describes them, "former communists" - should write down its own motives for a no confidence motion against the Borisov Cabinet and present them because BSP was ready to support them.

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