Bulgaria PM Resigns Ahead of Snap Polls to End Crisis
Bulgaria's Socialists-backed Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski handed in the resignation of his cabinet Wednesday ahead of snap elections that will seek to end months of political turmoil in the European Union's poorest country.
"The resignation of the cabinet of Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski was tabled in parliament at 5:59 pm (0259 GMT) Wednesday," the parliamentary press office said in a statement.
The days of Oresharski's minority cabinet were numbered after it lost the backing of a key ally in the legislature -- the Turkish minority MRF party -- in late June and the Socialists agreed on a snap vote set for October 5.
Political bickering and the boycott of the main right-wing opposition GERB party has blocked the work of parliament since then and lawmakers are only expected to meet in order to approve the resignation on Thursday or Friday.
Oresharski's government is the second to collapse in less than 18 months after the resignation of the previous GERB cabinet in February 2013 following months of sometimes violent anti-poverty demonstrations.
The technocrat premier assumed power in May 2013 but took off on the wrong foot by the controversial nomination only a month later of notorious lawmaker and reported media mogul Delyan Peevski as top security chief.
Disillusioned Bulgarians saw the candidature, even if later reversed, as a sign of the cabinet's dependence on behind-the-scenes oligarchic interests and staged months of demonstrations outside parliament calling for Oresharski to resign.
Dogged by the instability, the cabinet refrained from launching much needed reforms of the healthcare and pension systems, while a series of other controversial nominations in the public sector and the judiciary heightened people's perceptions about cronyism and corruption.
The country's small and open economy meanwhile continued to battle with sluggish economic growth, outflow of investors, falling budget revenues, persistent deflation and rising unemployment.
The rallies subsided but the Socialists' poor showing in the European Parliament elections and controversy over their insistence to push forward with a Russia-backed gas pipeline despite opposition by the European Commission stirred tensions with the MRF and prompted them to withdraw their backing from the cabinet.
The political vacuum of the past month coincided with runs on Bulgaria's third- and fourth-largest private lenders -- First Investment Bank and Corporate Commercial Bank (CCB) -- that added to Oresharski's troubles.
Urgent measures by the central BNB bank managed to avert a full-blown banking crisis but might eventually see CCB go bankrupt as the BNB governor also came under pressure to resign and expressed readiness on Tuesday to step down.
For poor Bulgarians, the bank turmoil brought up bitter memories of the country's worst banking crisis in 1996-7 when 14 banks went bankrupt, sparking hyperinflation and grave financial and economic crisis.
Analysts agreed that CCB's troubles resulted from a bigger row between the powerful Peevski and the bank's main shareholder Tsvetan Vasilev that cemented ordinary people's mistrust in a political and economic class they long saw as corrupt.
"The crisis of trust, of legitimacy deepened to levels where the very functioning of the public sphere is called into question," political analyst Antoniy Galabov told Agence France Presse.
The developments from the past months left no doubt that "there are very serious risks for the establishment of an oligarchic model of governance and these risks cannot be overlooked anymore," he added.
"Bulgaria has all the characteristics of a country ruled by corruption," Galabov added.
Bulgaria's constitution now requires President Rosen Plevneliev to give the three biggest parties in parliament the chance to form a new government before dissolving parliament and appointing a caretaker cabinet to organize the October 5 vote.
Two recent polls by the Gallup and Sova Harris institutes showed that the elections are likely to return to power the right-wing GERB party of ex-premier Boyko Borisov, who might however be forced to seek allies among five to seven parties in parliament to govern.
Source: Agence France Presse
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