For several days now political events in Bulgaria have been developing at an incredible speed. After during the past week the MRF party surprisingly called for early parliamentary elections, on Tuesday Sergey Stanishev, the leader of the mandate holder BSP called for the resignation of the cabinet and elections by the end of July. Just a few days ago the socialists opposed early elections in the coming months and thought a number of reforms could be implemented during the current session of the parliament.

The leader of the socialists had planned to have consultations over the topic of early elections with political forces but President Rosen Plevneliev was faster and called for an emergency meeting of the Council on National Security next week, at which the elections are to be discussed. It seems that early elections have become a matter of national security for the head of state, as according to him, the situation in this country has become unpredictable, while at the backdrop of ongoing political and parliamentary crisis leaders were attacking each other with controversial statements through media. The president says it was not just a matter of specifying a date for the early elections that is to be convenient for one or party or another.

The tradition for election rules to be changed immediately before the vote is most likely to be kept. At the end of the week it is expected that the parliament will discuss the referendum related to the election system, proposed by the President. He called for such a referendum in January but MPs are now to decide on whether voting will become compulsory or if part of the MPs will be elected in majority elections. The positions of parties related to these topics have changed since January. At the beginning of the year the referendum was supported by GERB while BSP and MRF opposed the move. Due to the current tension in the relations between BSP and MRF, the socialist now call for compulsory voting, which is not expected to be beneficial for MRF.

Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski has so far remained silent. The pre-election situation provides many questions but few answers. One thing is certain- after a year of controversial existence another government will go before the end of the full mandate.

English: Alexander Markov