Bulgaria's parliament on Wednesday rejected a technocrat government proposed by the centre-right GERB party, deepening a prolonged political impasse in the Balkan country and bringing it closer to another snap election.
The Balkan country has been in political turmoil since the summer of 2020, when thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets to protest against the rule of former prime minister Boyko Borissov, accusing him of failing to combat corruption and cosying up with powerful local oligarchs.
Borisov, who led the country for more than a decade before losing power in 2021 following the protests, won an Oct. 2 election but his GERB party failed to secure majority backing for any functioning cabinet in a tight parliament.
Bulgaria has gone through four elections in the past 18 months, hurting policymaking while Europe grapples with the impact of war in Ukraine and soaring energy costs and food prices that are hitting households hard.
In the parliamentary vote on Wednesday, GERB's nominee for prime minister, Nikolay Gabrovski, a 51-year-old non-partisan neurosurgeon, failed to win the necessary support to lead a technocrat government. He won only 113 votes in the 240-seat parliament.
125 lawmakers from four political parties voted against Gabrovski. GERB's main opponents said a technocrat cabinet would be just a facade for Borissov's rule and was unlikely to take any genuine steps to combat high-level graft.
Gabrovski said the failed vote meant that instead of the country dealing with economic and security issues, "we will be heading to the abyss of series of snap polls."
"We are disappointed that the political crisis continues," said Toma Bikov, a senior GERB member after the vote.
President Rumen Radev is now expected to ask GERB's main rival, the anti-graft party We Continue the Change, led by the country's last reformist prime minister, Kiril Petkov, to form a government.
But its chances of success are also slim as it lacks enough allies in parliament for a majority.
If a third, final attempt to form a government also fails, Radev would have to dissolve parliament and call snap polls within two months.
POLITICAL DEADLOCK
Failure to form a regular government would weigh on Bulgaria's plans to join the euro zone in 2024, efforts to join the EU's visa-free Schengen zone, and hurt its ability to tap efficiently billions of euros in EU funding.
It would also leave the Black Sea country under the rule of a caretaker government, hampering efforts to put a comprehensive 2023 budget in place to tackle surging inflation and economic weakness and carry out reforms to combat high-level graft.
After Borissov lost power in April 2021 he remained influential in the regions.
The new coalition government, which was formed by his opponents and led by Petkov last December following two snap polls, was fragmented and collapsed only six months after taking office.
The political deadlock has frustrated many in the European Union's poorest member state. A recent public opinion survey showed the trust in the parliament has dropped to a record low of 9%, while support for main political parties has remained relatively unchanged from the last polls in October.
(Reporting by Tsvetelia Tsolova, editing by Jason Hovet, Louise Heavens, Alexandra Hudson and Jane Merriman)
