The centre-right Blue Coalition will back Boiko Borissov’s forthcoming GERB government but will not sign the memorandum that Borissov offered to Bulgaria’s right-wing parties in lieu of a coalition government deal.
 
This was decided at a July 17 2009 meeting of the leaderships of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), the two major constituent parties of the Blue Coalition.
 
Borissov, whose party won 116 of the 240 seats in Bulgaria’s Parliament at the July 5 2009 elections, was handed a mandate by President Georgi Purvanov on July 16. Borissov has said that he will go it alone to form a GERB government, although people with skills could be drawn in from other parties.
 
GERB’s round of meetings earlier this week with right-wing parties saw the parties asked to sign a memorandum in support of the future government.
 
Before the Blue Coalition decision not to sign the memorandum, co-leader Martin Dimitrov – who is leader of the UDF – expressed misgivings about the concept.
 
Signing it would mean nothing, Dimitrov said. He described Borissov’s move to form a minority cabinet of GERB members as an "experiment" that created the risk that the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) could return to power.
 
The BSP and the MRF make up two of the three parties in the outgoing governing coalition. The third, Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s National Movement for Stability and Progress, won no seats in Parliament in the 2009 elections.
 
Several Bulgarian-language newspaper reports on July 17 said that the question of supporting the GERB government and of signing the memorandum had caused internal divisions in the Blue Coalition.
 
The Blue Coalition, which got less than seven per cent of the vote, was also the subject of implied criticism that it had made itself guilty of hubris.
 
Interviewed by mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa, GERB Sofia leader and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Luchezar Ivanov said: "We treated the Blue [Coalition] on an equal footing with the others but they expected more".

Later on July 17, after the Blue Coalition announced that it would not sign the memorandum, Ivanov said that negotiations were to proceed on offering varying versions of the memorandum for right-wing parties to sign.

While ultra-nationalist Ataka said that it would sign, Yane Yanev's Order Law and Justice party said that it would not. Ivanov said that talks were being held so that each right-of-centre party, the Blue Coalition included, would sign a version of the memorandum tailored to its viewpoint.