site.btaGERB Leader Pessimistic on Formation of Government, Considers Nenchev Good Candidate for Ambassador in Ukraine

Commenting on the current political crisis in the corridors of Parliament on Wednesday, GERB leader Boyko Borissov said that it is unlikely to form a government with the second or the third exploratory mandate, given the fact that the winning political force (GERB-UDF) has not been able to form a cabinet with the first mandate. "You cannot govern 240 MPs with [a parliamentary group] of some 18 to 20 MPs," Borissov stressed, adding that if the Bulgarian Socialist Party is handed the third mandate, GERB will negotiate with the socialists.

Answering a question if he sees an opportunity for a new Euro-Atlantic coalition, Borissov said he believes that all party leaders will learn their lessons, what they have done against each other over the past four years, what their results are, how voter turnout is declining and how much worse Parliament is becoming.

According to him, Nikolay Nenchev is a good candidate for Bulgaria's ambassador to Ukraine. Borissov sees nothing wrong with one state institution proposing a candidate and saying why it is proposing him, and another rejecting him and explaining why. According to the GERB leader, this is an institutional dispute, not a scandal.

Earlier this week, caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev dismissed criticism by President Rumen Radev that the government bypassed the head of State’s objections to the appointment of Nenchev as ambassador to Ukraine and send him to Kyiv as charge d’affaire as the procedure does not require the President’s approval. Glavchev said that the established protocol was duly followed and that there aren’t many candidates for the ambassador’s office in Ukraine, due to which a charge d’affaire had to be appointed. Bulgaria has been without an Ambassador in Kyiv for two years now.

Borissov recalled that Nenchev served as a defence minister in a government headed by him. Between 2014 and 2017, Borissov served as a PM in a government formed of GERB, the Reformist Bloc and Alternative for Bulgarian Revival. "I can only say that Nenchev is a good candidate – a defence minister, NATO minister for four years, nominated by the same parties, which are now Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria, the so-called Reformist Bloc back then," Borissov commented in a response to Radev’s call on the Foreign Ministry to comply strictly with the Constitution and the procedures for the appointment of heads of the Bulgarian embassies.

The leader of GERB also commented on Movement for Rights and Freedoms Co-Chair Delyan Peevski, who sent a report to the Interior Ministry, the Prosecutor's Office and the State Agency for National Security on the activities of the 49th National Assembly's ad hoc committee investigating the corrupt practices in the Customs Agency and the possible role of former Finance Minister Assen Vassilev in them. Borissov said that he has always been against the turning of Parliament from a legislative body into an investigative body. "I have always been against the judiciary institutions being used as an arbiter between dissatisfied political parties," he further said.