site.btaUPDATED PM-designate Gabriel Withdraws from Government Forming Procedure

Prime Minister-designate Mariya Gabriel Monday withdrew her proposal for a government, said the GERB press office. She set out her decision not to be this country's Prime Minister and not to propose a cabinet in a statement sent to the Parliament Chair and the GERB-UDF parliamentary group.

Gabriel says in her statement that "the agreed rotation model for the exercise of executive power in the mandate of the 49th National Assembly, implied a rotation between the person exercising the powers of prime minister with that of deputy prime minister, in a predictable and consensual procedure". "The balance of political responsibility, according to the objective coalition weight of the entities forming the majority in the 49th National Assembly, was a shared understanding during the negotiations on the priorities of joint governance and the mechanism of decision-making." 

Mariya Gabriel further writes that "the coordinated refusal and unwillingness to participate in the Gabriel-Denkov Cabinet of 11 ministers from the Denkov-Gabriel Cabinet who have submitted statements to that effect, and the lack of agreement during the subsequent negotiations, makes meaningless the procedure for electing a prime minister and a government. That means that the constitutional procedure, which has started, cannot be completed successfully".

Shortly after that, Parliament's website showed that GERB have moved a draft parliamentary resolution to declare the first government mandate unsuccessful. The draft resolution has been submitted by GERB-UDF deputy floor-leader Temenuzhka Petkova.

GERB's Prime Minister-designate announced her plan to withdraw at a news conference on Sunday. She also said there that her party is not going to participate in negotiations on the formation of a government when the President offers a mandate to the second largest group in Parliament, Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB). In a subsequent statement on the Bulgarian National Television on Sunday, outgoing Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov urged the GERB leadership to sign an agreement with CC-DB and form a government with Gabriel as Prime Minister and all other ministers remaining unchanged from the Denkov cabinet.

Following long talks between GERB-UDF and CC-DB, on March 19, Mariya Gabriel announced that she was ready with a coalition government and President Rumen Radev issued a decree asking Parliament to vote Gabriel into office as Prime Minister. Then CC-DB said that the proposed government had not been endorsed by them and they would not participate. Talks with GERB resumed in a quiet manner - until GERB-UDF announced Sunday that they quit.