site.btaThere Is Such a People Party to Put Forward New Nomination for PM, Revised Government Line-up "In Due Time"

Sofia, July 16 (BTA) - There is Such a People (TISP) party, the
winner in the July 11 snap general elections, will put forward a
 new nomination for a Prime Minister and a revised government
line-up "in due time" but not now. This transpired Friday during
 a news conference at BTA's National Press Club where TISP were
largely expected to name a new prime-ministerial nominee after
they decided to withdraw their initial one, economist and former
 state administration minister Nikolay Vasilev. 
 
TISP will have 65 seats in the new Parliament, making it the
largest group, which will be the first one the President will
ask to form a government.

The TISP news conference was held by two party leadership
members, Toshko Yordanov and Filip Stanev, and Nikolay Vasilev.
TISP leader Slavi Trifonov was not there.

The news conference came a day after Trifonov retracted
Vasilev's nomination and said a new PM will be sought.

Yordanov and Stanev persistently refused to answer questions
about the timing of their announcement of the new PM and
government proposal, or which ministers of their initial line-up
 will stay and which will be changed.

Yordanov also said that "Parliament is where the negotiations
[among the political parties] will take place". "We assume the
responsibility for proposing a cabinet. If it wins support, it
will take office. If not, the logical development is new early
elections. The responsibility here rests with our colleagues in
Democratic Bulgaria and Rise Up! Thugs Out!," Yordanov said.

Yordanov said that "for TISP it is logical to have partners in
the direction we are looking in, that is Democratic Bulgaria and
 Rise Up! Thugs Out!". "If we fail to have the support of these
two anti-establishment parties, we do not want to form a cabinet
 with the remaining formations," he said.

Stanev said that "it is senseless to engage in preliminary talks
 with political players" about who to nominate in the cabinet.
He also stressed that TISP will not engage in covert political
agreements.
 
Yordanov said that TISP "does not want the votes of GERB and the
 Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF)". He went on to note he
suspects that some of the persons in the incumbent caretaker
government are from the MRF but declined to name them.

Vasilev's Nomination and Withdrawal

On July 12, Trifonov announced TISP's proposal for a cabinet
line-up. The announcement apparently caught by surprise the
other political formations that will be represented in the new
Parliament and failed to win support from any of them.

Announcing Vasilev's withdrawal in a Facebook post on Thursday,
Trifonov justified the move by saying that the nominee, a person
 with experience in politics, in the state administration and in
 real business, became the target of a furious smear campaign
following his nomination.

Trifonov stressed that the allegations claiming that Vasilev is
linked to the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, are not true.

At the Friday news conference, Vasilev grabbed the opportunity
to disprove some of the attacks against his nomination and to
present a government platform he had prepared before
withdrawing.

He said that if the government had been appointed, it would have
 been "the most reformist government in the entire Bulgarian
history". It would have worked at a high speed "as a government
with the DNA of the future". It would have proposed a reduction
of the corporate income tax and the income tax for individuals
to 9 per cent from the current 10 per cent, scrapping the 8 per
cent tax on banking interest, cutting VAT to a flat rate 8 per
cent from the current 20 per cent, and a deficit-free budget for
 2022.

Vasilev said that the future governance programme needs to be
consulted and fine-tuned with TISP's parliamentary group, as
well as in dialogue with the other parliamentary groups.

Vasilev voiced disappointment with the strong "friendly fire"
from the rightist political formations. He also said he was
offended with being described as "a product of the MRF". NV/LN,
ZH