site.btaABV Say They Would Not Back Possible Centre-Right Government

104 POLITICS - GERB - ABV - TALKS - update 2

ABV Say They Would Not Back
Possible Centre-Right
Government


Sofia, October 19 (BTA) - The ABV party said on Sunday they
would not support a possible centre-right government and ruled
out the possibility of ABV experts sharing in a cabinet
dominated by the election-winning GERB party, even if GERB ask
them to join in. ABV favours a grand coalition between GERB and
the second-major force, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP),
which is a better way of bringing Left and Right together, ABV
Chairman Georgi Purvanov said.

Emerging from three and a half hours of talks with GERB,
Purvanov also said the meeting revealed a number of differences
between the two parties which seem hard to overcome, but he will
wait for deliberations inside ABV to indicate how the talks
with GERB should continue.

This was the last meeting between GERB, who won the October 5
early parliamentary elections, and the other parliamentary
parties in the first round of their political consultations
before forming the new government.

Purvanov, who is former President of Bulgaria, explained that a
centre-right government cannot be supported by ABV, because the
party, unlike BSP, is a young member of the left wing. He said
ABV would keep its experts from joining a future GERB
government, because a party cannot lend its experts to a cabinet
without making a political commitment. He said an expert-based
government is not the best formula, as proven by recent
developments. ABV will be a socially-sensitive corrective force
to the future government, Purvanov added.

Purvanov was on ABV's negotiating team during the talks. He said
his involvement was a last-minute decision motivated by his
desire to gain an in-depth insight into the content of the
discussions. The GERB team comprised Tsetska Tsacheva, Roumyana
Buchvarova and Menda Stoyanova.

Buchvarova said the question of a grand coalition remains open.
It depends on the decisions of other parties, she added. She
noted that both GERB and ABV are reluctant to have the Movement
for Rights and Freedoms, the Ataka party and the Bulgarian
without Censorship coalition as partners.

For her part, Stoyanova noted that GERB and ABV agree on 14 out
of 18 political priorities defined by GERB. They have serious
conceptual differences on two of them: the tax system and the
nuclear energy sector. The pension reform is yet another matter
on which they disagree.

GERB and ABV concurred about the need to draw up a national
demographic strategy and to separate the Chief Directorate for
Combating Organized Crime from the State Agency for National
Security. They also agreed that the Election Code needs amending
and found common ground as to the public health sector.

ABV insisted that the Belene nuclear power plant project should
be resumed and called for a parliamentary inquiry into
malpractices in the energy sector. According to Purvanov, GERB
apparently have no plans about the development of nuclear
energy.

How the consultations will continue will be decided at a
national meeting of GERB on Monday, which will be attended by
the party's Executive Committee, MEPs, MPs and grassroots party
leaders. Based on GERB's assessment of the results of the talks
so far, they will make decisions about continuing the
consultations on individual policy areas in an expert format,
Tsacheva said, noting that BSP is not excluded from the process.

Whether or not GERB will hold further talks with the Reformist
Bloc depends on whether the Bloc will provide written legal
guarantees that it is a stable political entity and evidence of
how decisions are made within the Bloc and what weight these
decisions have, the election winners said. LI/VE