site.btaParliament to Vote Thursday on Plamen Nikolov's Decision to Withdraw His Prime Minister Candidacy

August 11 (BTA) - The National Assembly will take a vote
on Thursday morning on Prime Minister designate Plamen Nikolov's
 decision to withdraw from the process of becoming government
leader, GERB-UDF Floor Leader Dessislava Atanassova said on
Wednesday, emerging from a meeting of the Presiding Council of
the National Assembly.

The Presiding Council met twice in the space of a single day on
Wednesday to discuss with constitutional law experts whether the
 legislature needs to react formally to Nikolov's desire to give
 up his status as Prime Minister designate.

The confusion was caused by an unprecedented situation. On the
one hand, Nikolov's party, There Is Such a People (TISP),
decided against asking the National Assembly to vote on the
government proposed by it after consultations with other
parliamentary forces showed that TISP's government will not get
enough support from the legislature. On the other hand, Nikolov
technically still holds the government-forming mandate granted
to him by President Rumen Radev.

The news that Nikolov has formally withdrawn his consent to be
designated as Prime Minister has been confirmed by the National
Assembly. He told BTA he was doing it for personal reasons, and
he saw no legal impediments to doing it.

Dessislava Atanassova, the GERB-UDF Floor Leader, said Nikolov's
 desire should be reckoned with, so that the constitutional
procedure concerning the first exploratory mandate to form the
next government can be completed normally. "We will not vote on
a proposed government line-up. We will only pronounce ourselves
on Mr Nikolov's stated will regarding his mandate as Prime
Minister designate," Atanassova explained. RI/VE

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