GERB leader Boyko Borissov said here on Sunday that the parliamentary group of GERB-UDF will propose a government line-up and there are two options in this direction.
According to Borissov, GERB-UDF already has a prime minister. “There is no one better than me now”, he said. Borissov as prime minister is the first option. According to him, the current political elite in Bulgaria is not mature enough for his governance.
The second option is for GERB-UDF to propose a neutral prime minister who will sign a technical agreement on the priorities on which all parliamentary parties will work in the coming months. In Borissov’s words, they have already found such a candidate for prime minister, who can propose in a conversation with the other political parties such a document with several priorities for the country, on which they can all work. According to him, if “the leaders of the other parties do not get stubborn” and sign the document, which will not even have legal value, but only moral value, they can agree on ten or fifteen points. He gave as examples the state budget, the laws under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, and the immediate staff reinforcement of the external border, in his words “so that my colleague Rutte [the Prime Minister of the Netherlands] can calm down”. “The only important thing is to make a government in a timely manner to give a quick solution to all issues. Everything else is wild populism,” the GERB leader said.
Borissov pointed out that such priorities could be the state budget, the laws under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan, immediate strengthening of the external border security, and negotiations with the countries that have reservations about Bulgaria’s entry into the Schengen area.
Asked by BTA which of the options will be proposed tomorrow, when President Rumen Radev will hand GERB-UDF a mandate to form a government, Borissov explained that after his return from Vratsa he would gather an executive committee and the parliamentary group and they would make a decision later on Sunday. “If we want to come out of the crisis strong, the option is me, however immodest it may sound. I do not see a competitor,” Borissov said.
He noted that on Monday GERB-UDF will present a short version of their programme with points made by the other political parties, put forward so that a technical government can be formed with three, six or nine months of life, to come out accountable to the people, he added. There is no option to immediately return an unfulfilled exploratory mandate, the GERB leader was adamant.
Borissov was in Vratsa to participate in a regional youth academy on the topic of fake news as an attack against the truth, organised by his party’s youth organisation. The two-day forum, which was attended by youth activists and MPs of GERB from Vidin, Montana and Vratsa, took place with the support of the Hanns Seidel Foundation.
Later on Sunday, GERB Deputy Chairman Tomislav Donchev told bTV that their options for prime minister designate are either a strong party nominee, such as GERB leader Boyko Borissov, or a compromise figure with broader public support.
In Donchev’s words, no coalition format is possible at the moment, because the abysses dug between the various political forces are too big, and some would become hostages to their radicalized supporters. Still, GERB-UDF will use the week after they receive the cabinet-forming mandate for a final attempt to talk “perhaps with everyone”, and the basis for those talks should be the parliamentary group’s governance programme.
