MPs make fourth unsuccessful attempt to elect parliament speaker
After three unsuccessful attempts, MPs returned to the plenary today in a new effort to elect a speaker of the National Assembly. For the fourth time none of the nominated candidates managed to collect the required number of votes, as, ten days after the first bell sounded for the 51st National Assembly, the formations do not seem to have found a way out of the stalemate.
Not only was the vote for the Speaker unsuccessful, but it also led to a split among the members of the WCC-DB formation, which earlier said they would back the nomination of the oldest parliament member - TISP's Silvi Kirilov. Only 17 MPs backed Kirilov's nomination, 19 abstained and one voted "against," which practically obstructed his selection, as he only got 101 votes - 20 short of passing the 121-vote barrier. None of the other candidate-speakers - Natalia Kiselova (BSP), Raya Nazaryan (GERB) and Petar Petrov (Vazrazhdane) received more than 50 votes "in favor."
The deputies will be reconvening again on Friday to continue their attempts to elect a speaker. Without this process coming to a close, the normal working of the parliament cannot begin.
Mariya Gabriel loses top NATO post, appointed head of a EPP think-thank
Despite rumors in recent months that she is likely to be elected as the second-in-command in NATO, former Bulgarian deputy prime minister, foreign minister and EU commissioner Mariya Gabriel did not receive the appointment.
Today, the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels officially announced that the new secretary-general, former Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, has opted to appoint Radmila Shekerinska, a former defense minister of North Macedonia and one of the country's current opposition leaders, to the position.
A little later, it emerged that Gabriel had been appointed to another position by her European People's Party (EPP). She will be president of the EPP's subsidiary, the Robert Schuman Foundation, which "supports democracy in Latin America, Africa and above all in Central, South-Eastern and Eastern Europe."
Second attempt to repair the Chaira Power Plant fails
The second attempt to select a company to undertake the repair of two of the hydro units at the disabled Chaira Pumped Storage Hydroelectric Plant (PSHPP) also failed. Today it became clear that no company has submitted documents for participation in the public tender for 220 million levs excluding VAT, which expired last Friday. The bidding documents were supposed to be opened yesterday, but it turned out that there were no bidders. Therefore, in the late afternoon at a meeting of the National Energy Company (NEK) Board of Directors it was decided to terminate the procedure. It is not clear whether and when a new one will be announced, and NEK has not yet commented on how it will deal with the problem.
At the moment, the only thing certain is that the failure of the second tender for Chaira will seriously delay the complete repair and reconstruction of the plant that was heavily damaged in 2022. The plant is unlikely to be able to restore even half of its capacity in the next few years. This is a serious problem in view of the lack of balancing capacity to pick up the slack in the frequent cases of overproduction or power shortages.
MPs make fourth unsuccessful attempt to elect parliament speaker
After three unsuccessful attempts, MPs returned to the plenary today in a new effort to elect a speaker of the National Assembly. For the fourth time none of the nominated candidates managed to collect the required number of votes, as, ten days after the first bell sounded for the 51st National Assembly, the formations do not seem to have found a way out of the stalemate.
