Borissov: 'We Did Everything We Could'
GERB leader Boyko Borissov expressed his perspective on the recent negotiations surrounding the formation of a government, highlighting the challenges and compromises faced during the process
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Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has painted a grim picture for Bulgarian economy in the next few years.
"Even if we do our best, all that we manage to save in 2012 will go to payments due in 2013 which we inherited from the three-way coalition. There is no horizon for Bulgaria", Borisov sated Saturday in an interview for private TV channel TV7.
Asked when Bulgarians could expect things to take a turn for the better, the Prime Minister said that incomes were not likely to increase until 2013.
"I have always been honest and we must be realists. We must pay for the railways, for the Belene NPP loan, for the Eurobonds of Milen Velchev," Borisov explained, adding that Bulgaria would go bankrupt if it failed to honor its due financial obligations.
Elaborating on the tainted legacy of the government of the three-way coalition, the Prime Minister praised former Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski for managing to set a little money aside in the reserve "so that they could not spend it all."
Borisov noted that Oresharski had succeeded to accumulate a billion or two in the Silver Fund, which he said would suffice for three months of pension payments, provided that the government did not intervene.
Extending the topic of past governments' failures, the Prime Minister argued that the three-way coalition had become true champions of EU funds absorption by way of embezzlement schemes.
Borisov insisted that the Trakia highway had not been built because the three parties had found it impossible to reach an agreement on the commission rate.
He went on to describe the presidential and local elections as a success of unexpected proportions both for him and for center-right ruling party GERB.
"I am far from thinking that we are perfect, but the people took stock of what was available in terms of other political parties' resources and realized that it would be devastating if Bulgaria were to hold early elections," Borisov reasoned.
He also noted that GERB was so far the only opponent the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the ethnic Turkish party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS).
Borisov described Ivan Kostov, former Prime Minister and a leader of the right-wing Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB), as a communist, paraphrasing excerpts from alleged publications of Kostov in Rabotnichesko Delo, the official newspaper and organ of the Bulgarian Communist Party.
"People recognize BSP and GERB as major rivals because we are playing a real and a rough game, and when you win such a game, the victory is sweet. DPS, however, remains in the center as a liberal formation," the Prime Minister stated.
He said former EU Commissioner and independent presidential candidate Meglena Kuneva had made a mistake by distancing herself from former Tsar and Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg.
"Even today he remains a bigger authority as compared to me, as compared to President-Elect Plevneliev or as compared to anybody else. It was the flatterers surrounding him who destroyed him," Borisov remarked.
The Prime Minister was adamant that Kuneva owed all her achievements, "if any", to the former Tsar, while her tenure at the Council of Ministers had been earned by way of her marriage to the son of a member of the Communist Party's Politburo.
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