GERB-UDF's Prime Minister-designate Nikolay Gabrovski has sent out invitations for meetings with representatives of all parliamentary forces in the incumbent Parliament, GERB said in a press release Wednesday.
The meetings are to be held on December 8 and 9. On the first day Gabrovski will confer in succession with Democratic Bulgaria (DB), BSP For Bulgaria, and Bulgarian Rise. On December 9 he will speak with Continue the Change, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and Vazrazhdane.
Earlier on Tuesday, DB's Atanas Atanassov said the alliance will be meeting Gabrovski, most likely on Thursday.
"As soon as he was nominated, we said we would meet him to explain why we cannot support him," Atanassov said, citing what he called the corrupt practices of Boyko Borissov's three governments as the reason.
Atanassov ruled out the possibility that they could change their mind about the first mandate if Prof. Gabrovski, a neurosurgeon, proposed a cabinet line-up of experts.
Asked if Bulgaria's blocked entry in Schengen was being used for political dividends, Atanassov said the real reasons were not stated. He commented that the problems were much more serious and had to do with the rule of law, more specifically with corrupt practices which breach the security of the EU as a whole. Saying that he himself wants Bulgaria to enter Schengen, he added that, unfortunately, it must be admitted there are objective reasons why this will not materialize.
Questioned if talking about Bulgaria as the EU's most corrupt country is an obstacle to its development, the DB co-leader said what mattered was "our partners' findings".
Also on Wednesday, Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) leader Korneliya Ninova told reporters that representatives of the Socialists' parliamentary group will meet with Gabrovski "to tell him that they respect him as a professor and medical professional but do not support either him or his government line-up, because GERB and its leader Boyko Borissov are behind it".
Ninova said the BSP representatives were invited to a meeting on Thursday and will attend out of respect for Gabrovski to tell him three sentences: “We will not support a first mandate of GERB. Thank you. Goodbye.” Ninova recalled a decision of the BSP National Council reading that the Socialists will not support a government under the mandate of GERB, the MRF or Vazrazhdane. "When the President hands the third cabinet-forming mandate, the BSP National Council will meet again to decide what to do next," Ninova said.
According to the BSP leader, the Netherlands’ position against Bulgaria joining Schengen is a sign that the ongoing work on the counter-corruption legislation and border protection should be finished. The institutions should give each other a hand. The caretaker government expects Parliament to pass certain laws under the National Recovery and Resilience Plan as a means to give another impetus to Bulgaria’s accession to the Schengen area, but the cabinet does not wish to come and discuss these laws, Ninova argued, describing this as a contradiction.
/ZD/
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