site.btaUPDATED If Invited, Socialists Will Hear TISP's Cabinet Proposals

The BSP for Bulgaria parliamentary group will respond positively to a possible official invitation by There Is Such a People (TISP) to negotiations on forming a new government, high-ranking members of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) said on Monday. Meanwhile, President Rumen Radev granted TISP the third exploratory mandate for forming a government.

BSP for Bulgaria Floor Leader Borislav Gutsanov told journalists: "We have held unofficial talks with TISP. Social policy, healthcare, peace, and energy are topics of key importance to BSP for Bulgaria." When the talks are finalized, the BSP National Council will convene, Gutsanov added.

He said the future cabinet should be one of experts, a supra-party cabinet of national concord. It is not a coincidence that the Constitution says that the first and the second mandate should be given to a prime minister-designate, and the third one should be awarded to a parliamentary group, he noted. "The third mandate is, in fact, for the whole Parliament. It is crucial for the wisdom behind this principle to prevail," Gutsanov said.

BSP deputy leader MEP Kristian Vigenin said that, based on the possible future talks with TISP, it will be assessed whether steps are possible on the part of the Socialists, and if so, the BSP National Council will be convened to make a decision.

Asked about President Rumen Radev's decision to hand over the exploratory government-forming mandate to TISP instead of BSP, Vigenin commented that it might have something to do with the litigation that outgoing BSP leader Korneliya Ninova has with the BSP National Council over who exactly represents the party. "I suppose the President recognises that there is a risk in these days when the fate of a possible future government has to be decided that there are some uncertainties who exactly represents BSP outside," he said and stressed that there are no such doubts inside BSP.

On the occasion of the decision of the Constitutional Court, Vigenin recalled that in Parliament, BSP had repeatedly pointed out that the texts in the Constitution were drafted in a wrong way. "We also had our criticisms in the part on the judiciary," he said.