The Bulgarian National Assembly rejected the motion of no confidence in the government of Prime Minister Boyko Borissov submitted by the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) with 124 votes “for”, 102 “against”, and 9 abstained. No less than 121 votes “for” are necessary for the motion to be carried in parliament. This was the fourth time a no confidence motion in the Borissov 3 cabinet has been tabled, this time over failure of environment and water policies.

The result of the vote came as no surprise. The formally ruling coalition GERB-United Patriots can rely on the support of 116 MPs whose votes are not enough for an absolute majority. At today’s vote, 8 MPs who are not members of any parliamentary group added their votes to this number, 6 of them from the nationalist party Ataka, formerly part of the United Patriots coalition. The MPs from the opposition party Volya abstained, again as expected. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), which gave its support to the motion of the socialists before the vote, commented that if the motion is voted down this would show that Volya party, whose leader Veselin Mareshki describes himself as an “anti-systemic player”, is, in fact, part of the governance of the country.

Just like the previous times, some of the cabinet ministers were in attendance in parliament during the voting of the no confidence motion, and as usual Prime Minister Boyko Borissov was absent. Asked to explain why, National Assembly President Tsveta Karayancheva stated that according to parliament’s rules the prime minister has no obligation to attend.

Borissov himself commented that with this vote, the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms were trying to carve out a coalition, and thanked the MPs from the United Patriots and from GERB for their support for the cabinet.

Stoimen Pavlov