GERB seeks equality in the negotiations with PP-DB. Otherwise, we go to early elections

The head of the GERB negotiating team, Maria Gabriel, announced that she will return an empty mandate if the PP-DB does not accept the latest proposal from the GERB by the procedure before President Rumen Radev tomorrow at 12 o'clock - "only a rotation of the Prime Minister with the Deputy Prime Minister and to preserve the current composition of the government", and then the two political forces continue to negotiate on the overall vision for a possible future government.

The news was announced during an extraordinary briefing at the headquarters of the largest party with the participation of Maria Gabriel, Denitsa Sacheva, Temenuzka Petkova and Raya Nazaryan, Dir.bg reported.

"Right from the beginning, we got involved to find a constructive solution. For us, Bulgaria needs a stable government. We have fundamental differences regarding GERB being accepted as an equal partner. I will return an empty mandate to the president. Today we proposed to vote on the composition of the current government only with a rotation of the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister," said the resigned Deputy Prime Minister Maria Gabriel and added: "What is happening will have an impact on my career, including outside Bulgaria.

"I recall that shortly before the start of the negotiations PP-DB came with a request for the post of Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, then a memorandum was sent to me while I was traveling. I clearly stated what was unacceptable to me in this memorandum. A debate followed in the National Assembly, which was not attended by ministers and the resignation of the "Denkov" cabinet came. After that, GERB-SDS put forward our agreement. We do not have disputes with PP-DB about regulators, the fight against corruption and judicial reform from GERB. We have differences in that GERB is placed as an equal partner - as the first political party with the most votes," added Gabriel

During the negotiations, we did not miss election slogans, hints and epithets, she said.

"We set a framework, a base, a mechanism, clear responsibilities - PP-DB rejected even our proposal to vote for the same composition of the government, only with rotation of the prime minister and the foreign minister," said Gabriel.

Intense negotiations took place between the previous partners in the assembly, accompanied by silence. The two formations agreed not to release information from the negotiations until they understand everything.

GERB leader Boyko Borisov warned at the beginning of the week that today is the last day for negotiations, and on Monday they either form a government or return the mandate immediately.

"Colleagues from the PP-DB are not ready to share power. We have been negotiating for 8 days and we have made it clear to the table that we want equality. GERB-SDS will not be a rubber stamp for reforms," revealed Denitsa Sacheva, part of the GERB negotiating team.

"There should be people from both coalitions in the ministries. We constantly used the time to talk about the composition of the Cabinet of Ministers, we understood that PP-DB are not ready to share power, they want to own it all, at any cost. If they will not share responsibility with us, let them find another partner. For us, it is an extraordinary compromise to say that Asen Vassilev can stay in the cabinet, and at the same time get an agreement that there will be no bright political figures in the cabinet," she pointed out.

Temenuzka Petkova commented that PP-DB believe that GERB can participate on an equal footing in the management of the country after these nine months have passed and we prove that we are fit to participate in this management. "To put such demands on us and to test GERB, it just has to be clear to everyone that it cannot happen," she added.

Raya Nazaryan commented that the two coalitions should have made all decisions in agreement.

There was complete bad faith on the part of the negotiators with us. They imported my rules for importing the regulators, with their signatures, without discussing them. Regarding the selection procedures, we do not have any disagreements, commented Raya Nazaryan. In connection with the work of the negotiation teams, Raya Nazaryan explained that during the past eight days, a document was "cleared" in detail, which is an agreement on joint management and a decision-making mechanism. Nazaryan pointed out that there were no contradictions on the judicial reform, the fight against corruption, the security services and the regulatory bodies, but the document on forming a government "was pushed for days to postpone the negotiations so that we could move on the other texts, on which it was evident that we had no disagreement, in order to leave us no time".

Tomorrow, President Rumen Radev will hand over a mandate to form a government to a candidate for prime minister, named by GERB-SDS, as the largest parliamentary group in terms of numbers. The presentation of the mandate will be at 12:00 in the building of the presidential institution.