site.btaPatriotic Front, Reformist Bloc Reach Agreement, Support for Government Remains

Patriotic Front, Reformist Bloc Reach Agreement, Support for Government Remains

Sofia, December 5 (BTA) - The Patriotic Front (PF) and the
Reformist Bloc (RB) reached an agreement about two controversial
appointments to public offices and support for the government
remains intact. This transpired at a news briefing held by the
leaders of the two parliamentary groups on Friday where PF
co-leader Valeri Simeonov said that they drop their demands for
removal of the two office-holders and will have instead their
own nominees for like positions as a confidence-building
measure.

There has been a fallout between the two groups over the
appointment of a deputy defence minister and Sofia Regional
Governor from the RB - more specifically from the Freedom and
Dignity People's Party which is affiliated with the RB and which
the Patriotic Front sees as a pro-Turkish party and therefore
unsuitable for the high corridors of power. In protest against
the two appointments, the PF has threatened to pull out its
support for the government in Parliament.

It was the Reformist Bloc which insisted that the government
they formed with GERB should have the support of the PF in
Parliament to ensure a majority - which it would not have had
without the PF.

The PF co-leader said that following a series of talks with the
other political forces supporting the government, his own group
came to the conclusion that the appointment of Orhan Ismailov as
deputy defence minister and Vesselin Penev as Sofia Region
Governor was done solely on the basis of their personal
qualities.

"After many talks and discussions, and mostly guided by our
highly responsible task and our obligation not to allow Bulgaria
to slip into a new political crisis of unforeseeable
consequences, we made a difficult decision. In the spirit of
transparency and in order to preserve an existing, be it
fragile, confidence between the two political forces, we came to
an agreement with the RB to nominate PF representatives to
similar seats as those [two] held by RB representatives," said
Simeonov.

He would not name any likely appointees but said they would put
forward politically unaffiliated candidates for the offices of
deputy defence minister and deputy of the Sofia Regional
Governor. The two candidates will be offered to GERB, the
dominant party in the government coalition with the RB, "in
order to strengthen the confidence we are trying to build", to
use Simeonov's words.