site.btaTISP's Slavi Trifonov: Nation Has Plunged into Constitutional Crisis

Bulgaria has plunged into a constitutional crisis due to the December 2023 amendments to the Constitution concerning caretaker governments, There Is Such a People (TISP) party leader Slavi Trifonov said in a Facebook post on Monday.

The comment was about President Rumen Radev's unprecedented refusal earlier in the day to decree the new caretaker cabinet proposed by prime minister-designate Goritsa Grancharova-Kozhareva because of Kalin Stoyanov's nomination for caretaker minister of interior.

Trifonov commented: "Something happened earlier today that we had not experienced as a society before. The President refused to sign a decree to appoint a caretaker cabinet headed by Goritsa Grancharova over serious suspicions of political capture of the proposed cabinet, and hence, doubts about the fairness of the upcoming elections, as a result of which this country plunged into a constitutional crisis. A constitutional crisis!"

"For once, we should think about why it happened. The constitutional crisis set in because the parties in the ruling 'assemblage' amended the Constitution in the part concerning caretaker cabinets," Trifonov said.

The 'assemblage' (also popularly known as the 'non-coalition') between Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and GERB-UDF plus their supporters, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), robbed the President of his powers to form a caretaker government, and instead of that, compiled a list of people eligible to be nominated for prime minister, whom the President can choose from, "all of them with bright political colouring". "With these changes, CC-DB, GERB and MRF tried to take control of the future caretaker governments. The current situation is a natural and logical consequence of that."

Trifonov went on to note that the formation of a caretaker cabinet had never been a problem before the constitutional amendments. "Therefore, when someone mentions a 'constitutional crisis' or voices their indignation at a 'political crisis', you should always remember the names of the most brazen liars who revised the Bulgarian Constitution in the most brazen way: Hristo Ivanov, Kiril Petkov, Assen Vassilev, Boyko Borissov and Delyan Peevski," the TISP leader said.