Bulgaria's Ex-King Party Dissenters Set up New Parliamentary Group

Politics | December 5, 2007, Wednesday // 00:00
Bulgaria: Bulgaria's Ex-King Party Dissenters Set up New Parliamentary Group Borislav Ralchev (M), who was elected leader of the new BND parliamentary group, was happy to announce the establishment of the formation of ex-king's party dissenters. Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)

The MPs who were expelled or left Bulgaria's former king Simeon Saxe-Coburg's NMSP party established a new parliamentary group on Wednesday.

Bulgarian New Democracy (BND) is the name of the formation, which includes 14 dissenters.

Leader of BND was elected Borislav Ralchev, who was previously expelled from NMSP at the request of the former monarch while deputy leaders are Tatyana Kalkanova and Valentin Miltenov.

"I expect more MPs to leave NMSP, which has lost its liberal profile," Svetoslav Spasov who was the last one to quit party membership told reporters.

According to dissenters, the total number of MPs to leave the king's party is expected to reach 20.

However, it would take a mass exodus to threaten the three way ruling coalition between the Socialists, NMSP and ethnic Turk MRF party, which has now a comfortable majority of 153 MPs in the 240-seat legislature.

"We are out of NMSP, which means we are out of the coalition," Spasov said adding that the new group will not necessarily vote against all the decisions of the ruling coalition.

"We will not work against what we have created," former Social and Economy Minister Lidiya Shuleva commented.

Below is the complete list of the dissenting MPs, who established the new 8th parliamentary group:

1. Plamen Panayotov, former deputy PM and parliamentary group leader.
2. Lidiya Shuleva, former Social and Economy Minister
3. Nikolay Svinarov, former Defense Minister
4. Borislav Ralchev
5. Borislav Velikov
6. Vladimir Donchev
7. Atanas Shterev
8. Tatyana Kalkanova
9. Vanya Tzvetkova
10. Ilko Dimitrov
11. Valentin Miltenov
12. Krastanka Shaklian
13. Boyko Boev
14. Svetoslav Spasov

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