Parliament voted down the only nomination for the central bank governorship, that of Lyubomir Karimanski. The votes were 56-36 with 140 abstentions.
The “for” votes came from TISP and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. The abstentions were Continue the Change and GERB.
Karimanski currently heads the parliamentary budget committee and was nominated by his There Is Such a People group.
The debates lasted close to three hours.
TISP’s remained the only nomination after the other candidate, Andrey Gyurov, who is currently floor leader of the ruling Continue the Change party, withdrew from the race. The withdrawal did not come before causing a deep rift in the government coalition.
Gyurov also had the support of the other two parties in the ruling coalition, the Socialists and Democratic Bulgaria, and Continue the Change declared that they were not going to back Karimanski due to concerns over his career.
Prime Minister Kiril Petkov and the Socialists have said they would rather see a new nomination procedure to give the coalition a chance to rally behind a single nomination – one that would possibly also be backed by the opposition. TISP, however, were adamant that they have no reason to pull out Karimanski.
TISP leader Slavi Trifonov commented on the downvote of his party’s candidate in a Facebook post later on Friday, saying that he did not “hear arguments against Karimanski; quite the opposite, I heard approving comments.” However, there were many votes against Karimanski afterwards, the post reads further. “TISP is being accused of reaching agreements under-the-table, but it seems that such agreements are being made by others”, Trifonov wrote.
Trifonov added that on Friday Krimanski was supposed to be elected central bank governor with the votes of GERB and MRF, but that did not happen. Thus, the current governor of the central bank, Dimiter Radev, who was elected by GERB and MRF back in the day, remains head of the Bulgarian National Bank, Trifonov said.
