President Rumen Radev said here Wednesday that he would invite Friday the caretaker Prime Minister, Dimitar Glavchev, to discuss with him proposed Cabinet changes. Glavchev is seeking to replace his Ministers of Foreign Affairs and of Agriculture, but needs a presidential decree for that.
The President was speaking to the press as he arrived in the St. Alexander Nevsky Square to welcome the visiting Italian President Sergio Mattarella.
The caretaker Prime Minister has asked to remove Foreign Minister Stefan Dimitrov and has proposed that the post be filled by Daniel Mitov, currently an MP of GERB-UDF. Also, he wants to replace Kiril Vatev with Georgi Tahov as Agriculture Minister.
The President, however, argued on Wednesday, that none of the nominations should be deputy party leaders and Mitov is one of the two GERB deputy leaders.
The President also commented: "Two ministers are dismissed just a week after the caretaker Cabinet took an oath of office, which is yet another proof of the failure of the constitutional reform. Seeking to impose a complete monopoly on power, the parties that voted for the constitutional amendments have in fact rendered the status of the caretaker cabinet meaningless and made it vulnerable to partisan interference. [...] You can already see how orders are issued at party forums, how the Prime Minister is threatened. I very much hope that Mr Glavchev is aware of the damage to the Cabinet and to the credibility of the electoral process when he lightning-fast caters to the wishes of his party boss. When I was in charge of caretaker governments, the parties could not even think of such interference. For the foreign minister, it was clear where the order came from, but who ordered the change of the agricultural minister as well?"
He recalled that the agriculture minister, Kiril Vatev, was personally presented by Dimitar Glavchev to stay in the caretaker cabinet in the spirit of continuity and as a person with proven managerial experience in the field. "Isn't it strange that the Prime Minister changes his mind every day and is it normal to change a minister every day? This is how we confuse the public, the business community and partners," he said.
Vatev was the Agriculture Minister in the Nikolay Denkov government.
Rumen Radev recalled that he had already stated that he would not interfere in the Prime Minister's decisions on the composition of the caretaker Cabinet, but noted that he would insist that Gvavchev keeps the promise he had made: to propose a cabinet that is equally distanced from all parties.
"My commitment remains to prevent a government crisis and a constitutional crisis, despite the inadequate changes in the Constitution," said Radev. "I have a responsibility to maintain political decorum in this Cabinet," he added, stressing that no deputy leader of a political party has ever been appointed to a caretaker cabinet appointed by him.
"We have dozens of excellent diplomats, all with the qualities to be ministers, so a worthy foreign minister can always be found to defend Bulgaria's foreign policy course and our aspiration for full European integration," the President said.
/DD/
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