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

104 POLITICS - GERB - ABV - TALKS - updated

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.

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.

For her part, Stoyanova noted that GERB and ABV agreed on 14 out
of 18 political priorities defined by GERB. They had serious
conceptual differences on two of them: the tax system and the
nuclear energy sector. LI/VE