By the end of next week, more than 20 left-wing formations will sign a coalition agreement for general participation in the upcoming elections for the 51st National Assembly. This is what the acting chairman of the BSP, Atanas Zafirov, said for the BNR, after participating in the meeting of the National Council of the party "Bulgarian Social Democracy - Euroleft".
There are two options discussed so far for the name of the broad center-left coalition - "Coalition for Bulgaria". and "BSP - United Left".
Zafirov said that it is still too early to talk about the formation of MP lists. They will be arranged according to a clearly outlined coalition mechanism, which will be agreed with all parties in the left alliance: "We are already very advanced at the stage of signing a coalition agreement, final clarifications on the composition of the coalition. So far, there are 20 political entities, talks are ongoing with several more parties from the left and center-left political space. The question of the name has not yet been decided, and next Tuesday is the last meeting of the Executive Bureau, where we will make a final decision to propose to our coalition partners to be discussed in a coalition format within a few days and hopefully by the end of next week to be able to sign the agreement itself. We expect to sign this agreement by the end of August. The time has been accurately calculated according to the schedule for the upcoming parliamentary elections," Zafirov pointed out.
Regarding the expectations of whether there will be a caretaker government on Monday, as well as changes in its composition, Zafirov answered: "In my opinion, the key is whether Kalin Stoyanov will remain interior minister or not. Such are the requests from the Presidency. Such are the requests, you can see from the political parties, that they would not accept such a decision. Everything is in the hands of Mr. Glavchev. At the moment, whether there will be an office depends entirely on him.
When asked if there could be other corrections in the caretaker government, Atanasa Zafirov said: "I cannot know and it is not the job of the BSP to get confused in the specific names. We can, only when we see them, assess whether these people are equidistant from political parties, whether they can be a guarantor of fair and honest elections. We gave the assessment for Kalin Stoyanov, we also gave the assessment for Mr. Glavchev. At the same time, I am clearly aware that the possibilities, the alternatives before the president are greatly narrowed, as a result of the clumsy changes in the Constitution".