Parliament rejected the vote of no confidence against the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev on April 11 2008. The no-confidence motion, the fifth against the Stanishev Cabinet, was filed by opposition parties on the grounds of "the Government's ties with organised crime”.

Only 82 members of Parliament (MPs) supported the motion, with 117 voting against and 35 abstaining. The abstainees came from the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP), one of the three parties in the ruling coalition.

Senior NMSP MPs said a day earlier that the party decided to abstain to reflect its critical stance towards Interior Minister Roumen Petkov, who is at the centre of the ongoing public row after senior police officials have been accused of ties to controversial businessmen or outright corruption.

The debate in Parliament on the day before the vote followed the well-worn tracks, with opposition parties accusing the Government of failing to pursue reform, while MPs from the ruling coalition accused rightist parties, now in opposition, of sowing the seeds of the problems when they were in power 1997/2001.

Although Stanishev was reported to be privately furious with NMSP's decision to abstain from voting, he struck a conciliatory note in his address to Parliament after the vote, calling on his coalition partners to settle any future disagreement in the council of the ruling coalition, rather than air their differences in public.

He slammed the opposition for filing the motion, saying it was a waste of time, preventing both the Cabinet and Parliament from doing their work, and only served as a public relations trick.

Stanishev hinted at possible re-shuffles in his Cabinet, but it remain unclear whether Petkov will be sacked, given that he received a vote of confidence from the council of the ruling coalition on April 9.