Opposition: Tolerance towards the cabinet will be a luxury, hot months lie ahead

The new session of Bulgaria's National Assembly began with declarations by the parliamentary groups.

“Bulgaria is entering a new political season, and we are expected to deliver quick solutions, free of the usual party rhetoric,” said MP Petar Vitanov on behalf of Progressive Bulgaria, the party of PM Rumen Radev.

Taking the first steps towards judicial reform and seeking broad consensus on the election of a new, effective and honest Supreme Judicial Council will be one of the priorities of the ruling party. Ending the practice of patients having to make constant additional payments, reducing the number of members on the boards of state-owned enterprises, supporting measures to shed light on the pricing of essential goods, and the Interior Ministry’s uncompromising fight against corruption at the highest levels of government are also on Progressive Bulgaria’s list of urgent tasks.

“The tolerance we showed during the first 100 days of the government was a matter of political culture, but during the new session it will be a luxury we cannot afford,” said MP Toma Bikov of GERB-SDS.

The MP also said that the government of Rumen Radev was shaping up to be transitional rather than reform-oriented. According to him, its only horizon is the achievement of narrow party goals, thereby depriving itself of the longer-term perspective of consolidating the nation around common strategic objectives. He said the cabinet was showing no potential for a new type of solutions or a new direction in the country’s political and public life.

“If there is no convincing response from Progressive Bulgaria to rising prices and the fight against the oligarchy, the winter months will be very "hot",” warned former PM Nikolay Denkov, MP of "We Continue the Change" political party. In his words, the time for lies and empty optimism is over. “The ugly truth is that the oligarchy has not been defeated, no criminals have been punished, prices continue to rise, and winter is approaching,” the MP added.

Edited by Diana Tsankova