The parliamentary roulette urged BSP to regain a mandate to form a government. However, President Zhelev refused to hand it over to their candidate for prime minister, Nikolai Dobrev. This situation presented the next president with a difficult task. Stoyanov still fulfilled his obligation under the Constitution, but in his first address he appealed to the Socialists to return it unrealized. The BSP complied and Dobrev returned the mandate. 

The President appointed a caretaker government headed by Stefan Sofianski, which revealed the scale of the economic catastrophe, defended the national currency, agreed on the establishment of a Currency Board, and applied for Bulgaria's membership in NATO. And all this just a few months before the elections in April of that year, won by an absolute majority of the United Democratic Forces (SDS).