Embattled Bulgarian PM Evades TV Debate with Protesters

Antoaneta Tsoneva, President of the Institute for Public Environment Development (IPED), photo by BGNES

Bulgarian PM Plamen Oresharski has declined to meet leading protest representatives who had invited him on a live TV debate.

In return, Oresharski invited the four to meet him Thursday at the Council of Ministers.

The group - including rights NGO president and supporter of fair elections Antoaneta Tsoneva, law professor and former socialist MP Georgi Bliznashki, economist and ex caretaker minister Asen Vasilev, and film director Stoyan Radev - has declined the PM's offer, saying they don't want the debate to take place behind closed doors.

The four had also invited to the debate Bulgarian vice-PM and Minister of Interior Tsvetlin Yovchev, as well as the leaders of the two parties supporting the cabinet, the Bulgarian Socialist Party's Sergey Stanishev and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms' Lyutvi Mestan.

Yovchev, Stanishev and Mestan have not issued a reply yet.

The Oresharski cabinet has been faced with more than six weeks of protests demanding that it step down.