site.btaUPDATED Dimitar Glavchev Is Caretaker PM-Designate

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev has designated Dimitar Glavchev as candidate for caretaker prime minister, the President's Press Secretariat said on Thursday morning.

The head of State will receive the candidate at 12 noon on August 22 to mandate him to propose a lineup of a caretaker cabinet.

Glavchev, who is the incumbent caretaker Prime Minister, was among six senior office holders among whom Radev had to pick a potential caretaker PM appointees. He was the only one who publicly declared his readiness to accept this position. At consultations that the President held on Wednesday in line with the constitutional procedure, it emerged that Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) Governor Dimitar Radev, Deputy Governor Radoslav Milenkov and Bulgarian National Audit Office (BNAO) Vice President Toshko Todorov declined the offer. National Assembly Chair Raya Nazaryan spoke to Radev by telephone and while no details were made public, she had previously said that she refuses to head a caretaker cabinet. No information was available about the reply of another BNB Deputy Governor, Petar Chobanov, who also had a phone talk with Radev.

The other BNAO Vice President, Goritsa Grancharova-Kozhareva, was already designated to form a cabinet but her proposal was rejected by the President on Monday after she refused to replace Kalin Stoyanov as her interior minister nominee. Of the remaining three options on the list, the third BNB Deputy Governor, Andrey Gurov, is suspended from office pending an appeal of an alleged conflict of interest incompatibility, and the offices of National Ombudsman and Deputy Ombudsman are vacant.