GERB Scorns Ex MPs for Seeking Unemployment Aid

Bulgaria's GERB party is going to reprimand its two former MPs, who served in the now-dissolved Parliament, for registering themselves as unemployed in Bulgaria's Labor Bureau.

Velichka Shopova and Zoya Georgieva, former MPs from Bulgaria's second-largest city of Plovdiv, who stand to a benefit of 60% of their former BGN 2 100 salaries, well above the average for Bulgaria, are going to be removed from the party ballots for the snap May 12 elections, writes the online edition of Standard daily.

The decision has been made after local structures of the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party and its headquarters have been inundated by angry phone calls of unemployed Bulgarians receiving the mere BGN 100 in social assistance.

An unnamed senior GERB source has told Standard that the actions of the two MPs were not illegal, but morally wrong.

Initially, both have been nominated as GERB candidates for the upcoming early elections, but the party lists have not been ordered yet.

GERB's leader and former Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, together with his former Deputy and former Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, are discussing the ballots over the weekend. It is expected that names of other GERB functionaries who became notorious through scandals would be removed from them.

On February 21, Bulgaria's Parliament approved the resignation Borisov's GERB government amidst unprecedented since 1997 protest rallies against sky-high utility bills, monopolies, stagnation, corruption and wide-spread poverty, which later turned into a civil unrest and political demands.

Snap general elections are to be held May 12, just two months ahead of the regular date in July.

President, Rosen Plevneliev, named the caretaker government on March 12.

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