site.btaTISP Party Holds Governance Consultations with MRF

Sofia, July 25 (BTA) - There Is Such a People (TISP), the party which controls the largest group in Bulgaria's newly elected National Assembly, on Sunday held consultations with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the last meeting in a series of talks between TISP and other parliamentary forces ahead of forming a new government.

Emerging from the one-hour meeting with TISP, Movement for Rights and Freedoms Floor Leader Mustafa Karadayi said that most of the two parties' ideas coincide but differences undoubtedly exist as well. "On our part, we said that there is no such thing as unconditional support," he stressed. In his words, a condition that the MRF will not give up on is "the restoration of normalcy in politics and democracy", meaning that the National Assembly should take its place as set by the Constitution, and the governance apparatus should not be used as a baseball bat against citizens and businesses.

"We said firmly that we will not propose and do not demand to propose ministers, but who the members of the cabinet will be matters to us," the MRF leader told reporters.

TISP Floor Leader Toshko Yordanov said after the meeting that for the MRF it is the individuals in the new government that matter, but "that is our responsibility and we will not be taking any advice from anybody". He specified that his party had invited the MRF to the meeting not to seek support for a potential TISP government but to present TISP's views for a governance programme, priorities, short- and long-term goals, and the MRF presented theirs in turn.

In Yordanov's words, when TISP proposes a government line-up, the MRF will decide if they like it or not and whether they will vote in favour or against. "We did not seek support from the MRF, nor did they offer us people, but even if they had, we would not have accepted them," the TISP Floor Leader told reporters.

Sunday's consultations were also attended by TISP deputy leaders Viktoria Vassileva, Filip Stanev, and Ivaylo Valchev, and by MRF deputy chairs Yordan Tsonev and Halil Letifov and MP Stanislav Anastassov.

RI/DS