site.btaUPDATED MRF Deputy Floor Leader Tsonev Says Party Will Back GERB's Cabinet, Decide What to Do with Second Mandate

Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) Deputy Floor Leader Yordan Tsonev said Wednesday that his party, which is the second largest force in the 50th National Assembly, will back the first cabinet-forming mandate, "but they will receive the second one and decide what they will do with it". Tsonev was speaking during a parliamentary debate on the cabinet lineup proposed by GERB-UDF prime minister-designate Rosen Zhelyazkov.

The first and the second mandates are bound by Constitution to go to the two largest groups, GERB-UDF and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. Under Bulgaria's basic law, the President presents the third mandate to a parliamentary political force at his discretion. 

"We, the MRF, will act statesmanlike when it comes to the first, second, and third mandates," he said. Tsonev stressed that MRF will not hold talks with Vazrazhdane, but they are open to dialogue with the rest of the parties.

The Deputy Floor Leader said that "the responsibility is on everyone: the first and second political forces, as well as the rest".

In his words, the actions of the MRF Parliamentary Group are "based on political logic, on what they have heard from the voters".

He noted that the first takeaway from the June 9 snap parliamentary elections is that people’s trust in the parties, the political process, and the state institutions has dropped to "a critical minimum". In his words, the second takeaway is that "the people who cast their ballots or failed to do it want a stable political process, a regular cabinet, a stable majority in the National Assembly, because the government is not an end in itself". The MRF Deputy Floor Leader recalled that they had expressed support for the government-forming mandate of the election winner GERB-UDF during the consultations with President Rumen Radev in late June.

Tsonev said that a failure to form a cabinet will result in a larger decline in public involvement in the political process. In his words, "according to our constitutional framework, the National Assembly is the legislator". He noted that the way out of this cycle of declining trust and endless elections is for a cabinet to be formed under the current or following legislatures. Tsonev said that another solution is to change the constitutional framework, adding that this will be impossible "given the rift in society". He added that the MRF will do everything in their power to ensure that there will be a cabinet. "We will wait for the third mandate to be handed and put in effort to have a government formed," the Deputy Floor Leader said, adding that the cabinet should be based on "the values professed by the free Western world to which Bulgaria belongs".