Bulgaria’s GERB Starts Coalition Talks with Nationalist Formation Patriotic Front

Boyko Borisov, former Bulgarian Prime Minister and leader of center-right party GERB, photo by BGNES

Bulgaria’s center-right party GERB, the winner in the early elections on October 05, will hold talks on forming a new government with representatives of nationalist coalition Patriotic Front.

GERB, which won 84 seats in Parliament, is to discuss opportunities for coalition-building with representatives of the Patriotic Front, a nationalist coalition comprising the IMRO – Bulgarian National Movement (VMRO – Bulgarsko Natsionalno Dvizhenie) and the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria (NFSB), which won 19 seats in Parliament in the early elections.

A negotiating team of GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) including Tsetska Tsacheva, Rumyana Bachvarova, and Menda Stoyanova, has been holding talks with the three highest-scoring parties over the past three days, including the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), liberal party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), and right-wing formation The Reformist Bloc.

BSP and DPS have been ruled out as a coalition partner in a future government.

On Wednesday, GERB said that it was quitting talks with the Reformist Bloc, despite the presence of matching points in the programs of the two parties, as GERB lacked guarantees that the right-wingers would be a stable and reliable partner.

GERB has demanded a “government of shared responsibility” including ministers from a number of political parties brought together by a coalition agreement, according to reports of the Bulgarian National Radio.

At the same time, the Patriotic Front has called for an expert government of non-political persons which enjoys the support of as many parties as possible.

GERB and the Patriotic Front also clash on the topic of the state budget update, with the nationalist coalition opposing new debt and questioning the reliability of data released by the caretaker government on the financial situation in the country.

Patriotic Front has also demanded that DPS be ousted from power.

Consultations between GERB and the Patriotic Front start at 1 pm local time.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!