At the first session of Parliament this week, the parliamentary group of centre-right Order, Law and Justice (OLJ) officially seized to exist when Speaker of Parliament Tsetska Tsacheva formally entered Mario Tagarinski's request to leave the OLJ group and become an independent Member of Parliament.

According to the rules of Parliament, a parliamentary group has to have at least ten members. With Tagarinski gone, the OLJ group was reduced to nine and was automatically disbanded, turning all OLJ MPs into independent MPs.

Tagarinksi and the other OLJ MPs are not allowed to join another parliamentary group and will remain independent for the remainder of the Parliament's term.
Yane Yanev, leader of the OLJ, will have to leave his post as chairperson of the anti-corruption committee in Parliament and the OLJ will no longer have a Deputy Speaker of Parliament.

Speaking time for the OLJ MPs will be limited to five minutes instead of 20.

Tagarinski filed his request on December 4 2009, sending the OLJ into a five-day turmoil. At first, Tagarinski could not be found to comment on his request to leave the OLJ group.

He did not answer his mobile phones and he could not be found at his home. OLJ leader Yanev claimed that Tagarinski's move was a surprise to the party and suggested that Tagarinski had been forced to take his decision.

Yanev went so far as to say that other parties had a role in the OLJ saga and blamed the ruling Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (abbreviated as GERB in Bulgarian).

According to Yanev, a few hours before Tagarinski filed his request, GERB's Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov had suggested that such a thing might happen.

"Tagarinski's move strangely coincided with the moment we entered into an argument with GERB and said that the actual ruling coalition was between them and Gotse (the name under which President Georgi Purvanov worked as a history researcher for the former communist secret services)," OLJ said.

Later, Yanev asked Prime Minister and GERB leader Boiko Borissov to help OLJ get its group back. One option would have been to amend the rules of Parliament and reduce the minimum number of MPs to eight.
The suggestion was dismissed by Borissov and other parties in Parliament, saying that the OLJ had signed under the 10 MPs rule when Parliament was formed.

"I regret that I have been involved in this internal party-issue, with which GERB and myself have had nothing to do. Next time someone will ask me to get his wife back," Borissov told reporters on December 6 2009.

Several days later, Tagarinski denied all OLJ allegations and said his decision was not emotional but a result of careful analyses.

"I probably should have taken it long ago, but I tried to make compromises about the way things have been run within the OLJ" he said in an interview with Bulgarian National Television on December 8 2009.

Yanev's OLJ party won 4.13 per cent at the July 2009 elections, which made it the sixth party to pass the four per cent threshold, with 10 MPs out of the 240 seat Parliament.

After the Borissov Cabinet was formed, Yanev said his party would support Borissov for the next six months. However, in recent weeks, OLJ took a turn and started challenging GERB's activity in Parliament.