The Bulgarian conservative party RZS (“Order, Law, Justice”) no longer has a parliamentary group as a result of the decision of one its members to leave it.

MP Mario Tagarinski deposited Friday afternoon his declaration to the Parliamentary Chair Tsetska Tsacheva that he was leaving the RZS group.

Thus, the group of the conservatives chaired by Yane Yanev, which had 10 MPs – exactly the minimum number required for forming a parliamentary group, is now left with only 9 MPs.

The exact reasons why Tagarinski left the RZS group have not been stated, his decision is motivated on the grounds of article 16, item 3 of the Parliamentary Statutes, which states that a MP has the right to leave their group.

Yanev’s party RZS with its 10 MPs has declared an unconditional support for the GERB government of PM Borisov for the first six months of its term. GERB has 116 MPs, and its other allies – nationalist party Ataka – 21; and rightist Blue Coalition – 15 – in the 240-seat Parliament.

It is still unclear whether MP Tagarinski will continue to support the rightist majority as he had while he was part of the RZS.

In a declaration, the RZS group said Tagarinski had been “bought” in order to deal the conservative party a blow because it recently raised alarm about the emergence of a new “coalition” between the GERB party and Socialist President Georgi Parvanov.

“We believe that Tagarinski is only an instrument of the prepared political repression against the group of RZS. It is obvious that our group hinders the work of those who want to preserve the 20-year post-communist status quo,” the party declaration reads.

It goes on to compare Bulgaria’s Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov to a predecessor of his from the Stalinist period in Bulgaria right after the 1944 Red Army coup, Anton Yugov. The reason for this comparison is the fact that early Friday morning Tsvetanov, speaking on the national TV channel BNT 1, said Yanev was nervous because some of his 10 MPs might leave the group.

“Bulgaria is seeing the emergence of a government model copying the methods of Putin’s Russia. There is the two-headed GERB party with its two leaders in which none of them knows what the other one is doing, and then there is President Parvanov who is already manipulating not just the executive but also the legislative branch,” the RZS party said.

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