Bulgaria’s populist There Is Such a People (ITN) party on Thursday abandoned an attempt to form a new national government, paving the way for President Rumen Radev to call snap elections, Reuters reports.
ITN’s decision came after the centre-right GERB party and its former coalition partner We Continue Change (PP) said they would not be able to form a new government. Ivaylo Valchev, the deputy-head of the ITN parliamentary faction, told Radev in a meeting:
Elections are the highest form of democracy, we’re going to hold this folder for a few more seconds and return it to you empty, with an unfulfilled mandate.
Radev said he would now start looking for an interim prime minister to form a cabinet tasked with organising snap elections.
Bulgaria has been plagued by political instability since anti-corruption protests in 2020. Until elections in April 2023, it was governed by interim governments appointed by Radev in the absence of a stable elected coalition.
Earlier this month, Foreign Minister Mariya Gabriel failed to form a government after Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov resigned from the PP on 5 March.
Denkov resigned to allow GERB to lead the government for nine months, as agreed after last year’s elections. On Wednesday, he also rejected Radev’s offer to try to form a government.
GERB came first in last April’s elections, winning 69 seats in the 240-seat parliament. The PP-led bloc won 64 seats. Under the constitution, the Bulgarian parliament is not obliged to dissolve before snap elections.
