A last-minute turnaround by Yane Yanev’s Order Law and Justice (OLJ) party scuppered the March 31 vote to impeach President Georgi Purvanov, as Bulgaria’s ruling party and its allies lost the slice of votes they would have needed to try to get Purvanov fired as head of state.

The episode was the first time that an impeachment of a president had been attempted in Bulgaria.The question before Parliamen was whether there were sufficient grounds to forward to the Constitutional Court a motion that Purvanov be impeached.

To achieve this, the ruling majority, which tabled the motion, needed 161 votes out of the 240 MPs. At the end of the day, the motion was supported by 155 votes, which put an end to a conflict which neither of the parties involved claimed to have wanted in the first place.

Yanev’s u-turn, a few hours ahead of the vote, came six days after OLJ MPs signed the motion to impeach Purvanov. OLJ said that it objected to what it said was ruling party GERB’s desire to turn the vote on Purvanov’s impeachment into a vote on the Government of GERB leader Boiko Borissov.

And since, a few months ago, OLJ officially set its cap against the Government by asking for a new constitution, the party said it was not going to take part in a debate which was a form of support for the Government. OLJ’s announcement before the debate started made the outcome a foregone conclusion.

The drama started on March 5 when Purvanov published a transcript of his meeting with Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov the same day. Although the transcript consisted no vital information, it portrayed Dyankov as subordinate to Purvanov and sent out a number of messages to the Government criticising its economic policy. As a result, GERB claimed that Dyankov had been ambushed by Purvanov, and that he (Dyankov) did not know the conversation was being recorded which, according to GERB, meant that Purvanov had been in breach of the constitution by violating Dyankov’s privacy.

Although this claim was seen by a number of legal experts as too flimsy to justify Purvanov’s impeachment, the issue became highly political, especially after Purvanov told a news conference that there could be no compromises as long the impeachment procedure was underway.

It was a clear message to Borissov, who found himself caught in the middle. On one side were his fellow party members’ expectations of revenge for Purvanov bushwhacking Dyankov, and on the other hand were his ties with Purvanov, with whom Borissov always claimed to have had a good relationship. As the row wore on, Borissov deliberately kept a low profile, leaving Parliament to deal with it. Many of Purvanov’s critics saw his actions as a firing of the starting gun for his own political project for the time after the end of his second term in office in 2012.

This was why, according to some analysts, an impeachment motion supported by Parliament would have served the image Purvanov was seeking for himself, as the sole alternative to the Government – especially given the limp performances of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms after both lost the 2009 election to Borissov’s GERB.

On another level, Bulgaria’s reputation in the European Union undoubtedly would have been tarnished by the impeachment procedure, should Parliament have approved it. Given all this, Borissov had to find the balance between preserving GERB and Dyankov’s dignity, and maintaining a working relationship with Purvanov, especially since at his news conference Purvanov said "it is the Government (not Parliament) on the move".

In the end, the last-minute announcement of Yanev’s choice spared Borissov from having to make a choice.