The Bulgarian Parliament has decided in favor of a roll call vote as it started the debates on the requested confidence vote by the Borisov Cabinet.

At the initiative of the ruling party GERB, at the onset of the debates Thursday morning, the Parliament decided that each Member of Parliament will have to vote on the confidence motion by standing up from their seat and declaring whether they vote in favor, against, or abstain.

The entire Cabinet arrived to the Parliament for the confidence vote that PM Borisov requested in the wake of the Tapegate that has shaken public confidence in the government.

"In order to continue to conduct its policies, the government needs the support of the MPs, whom we are asking to confirm with their vote our policy that the Bulgarian voters supported a year and seven months ago," Borisov told the Parliament Thursday morning.

He said the measures that his government has undertaken in order to bust rings, which have been draining state money for years, have encountered resistance and reactions against the Cabinet and himself.

"We have arrived at a situation in which unclear political actors with anonymous sources use media with unknown owners to distribute illegal materials, records, and tapes of phone conversations aiming to discredit the government, its efforts, ad policies, and to create tensions in the society," the PM declared reiterating his arguments from the Cabinet meeting on Wednesday that he would prefer to go to early elections rather than "succumbing" to pressure by "a gang of bandits."

Technically, the motives of the government to request a confidence vote refers to "the overall policies of fighting corruption, crime, for modernization of the Bulgarian economy and finances, for reforms in foreign policy, defense, and security, health, education, social policy, justice, transport, agriculture, environment, culture, and absorption of EU funds, and sports."

The vote of confidence is expected to be positive for Borisov as his party GERB with its 117 MPs, out of a total of 240 MPs, and the nationalist party Ataka with 20 MPs will back his rule. Ataka has been in a de facto informal coalition with GERB, and its leader Volen Siderov has declared there will "no backstabbing" during the vote.

The right-wing Blue Coalition, with its 14 MPs, which has been an uneasy and highly critical ally of GERB in spite of the prodding of the European People's Party (to which both entities belong), will most likely abstain during the vote of confidence as its MPs do not wish to vote the same way as the BSP and DPS, who declared they will vote against.

This is the third vote of confidence in Bulgarian history after 1989 – after similar motions in 1992 and 1994.

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