Less than a year before the next general elections for Parliament, MPs predictably rejected a no confidence motion tabled by the opposition against the tripartite coalition Government led by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev.

The motion was filed on July 23, the day when the European Commission decided to freeze about 800 million euro in European Union funding to the country based on doubts about Bulgaria’s ability to tackle organised crime and alleged corruption in managing EU money.

This was what the opposition decided to use as a reason for the sixth no confidence motion in three years against the Government.

Stanishev only needed the support of 150 MPs from the three ruling parties: his Bulgarian Socialist Party, the National Movement for Stability and Progress and the Movement for Right and Freedoms. On July 30 he got exactly 150 votes in favour of his Government. A total of 84 MPs from the opposition voted against the Cabinet with one independent MP abstaining. In 240-seat Parliament, this was more than enough for Stanishev to face MPs with confidence after the vote, despite the loss of millions of euro and withering criticism from the EC about Bulgaria’s behaviour during its first 18 months of EU membership.

Stanishev showed his confidence in the ruling coalition on July 29 when Parliament debated the no confidence motion. Although present in the hall, he did not choose to address MPs, leaving his cabinet minister to do it for him. Earlier statements from NMSP politicians, hinting that they would not necessarily support the Government in the vote, proved to be just hot air. 

“Calling for early elections and tabling one no confidence motion after another seems to be the opposition’s only way to come to power, by trying to destabilise the country,” Stanishev said after the vote. This, he said, was a luxury the Government could ill afford.

As usual, the opposition did not stay to listen to Stanishev’s speech and left the hall. In effect, they did what Volen Siderov, leader of ultra-nationalist Ataka party, had been asking them to do a week before the vote. Siderov asked the opposition to leave Parliament as a way to undermine the Government. The first to make such an appeal was Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov, leader of the biggest party in opposition, the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (abbreviated as GERB in Bulgaria). GERB is represented only by one MP in Parliament who split from NMSP in 2006 when GERB was formed as a party sixteen months after the elections.

So far the only MPs to have heard Borissov and Siderov have been those from Ataka  who staged an ongoing protest camp against the Government in front of the Presidency on July 29. All other opposition MPs will also be out of Parliament for the next month after the ruling majority decided to have MPs’ summer leave last from August 1 to September 5.