Tomorrow, August 6, Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev will issue a decree dissolving parliament. What will the 42^nd National Assembly be remembered for? On its last day, Radio Bulgaria’s Tatyana Obretenova talked to representatives of the leading political forces.

Dimitar Glavchev, deputy head of the GERB parliamentary group.

“Revocation, failure to meet the quorum, nothing positive for Bulgarian citizens, as is the idea in the work of the MPs. After all it is what MPs are elected for – to work for their voters. Unfortunately, there’s nothing the 42^nd National Assembly ought to be proud of. You saw for yourselves – everything revolved around whether parliament will be in session, whether the quorum will be met so that it may have a plenary sitting. But all this is the result of the way the administration was formed.”

Atanas Merdjanov, head of the Bulgarian Socialist Party parliamentary group.

“I’ll remember it for the efforts of two parliamentary groups to assert parliamentarianism. For the out and out sabotage by representatives of GERB who despite some declarations that were made, you saw for yourselves how they took part and how they attended.”

Lyutvi Mestan, head of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms parliamentary group.

“Many are the lessons that can be drawn from these 15 months of the 42^nd National Assembly. That is precisely why we are steering towards what we have called a smooth transition to stability of the administration. And we would really like to see the political process develop towards stability of the administration, of effective reform management. In light of the lack of a parliamentary majority, a strategy of survival was inevitably put in place. But a hard and fast evaluation of any administration is a bit risky, for the simple reason that we have not yet drafted objective evaluation criteria. So that perhaps the emotion on this day, of the pre-election situation will preclude any assessment before we have rational arguments we can adduce. It is too early, that is a matter for the future. But I would like to see the process develop in such a way that no one in Bulgaria could feel nostalgia for this administration. If that were to happen it would be a great pity.”

The 42^nd National Assembly will also be remembered for the conduct of the 4^th political force, Ataka. In a nutshell it began with the notorious “golden finger” that ensured a quorum for parliament and ended, again symbolically, with the bag of “30 pieces of silver” belonging to the latest in the series of MPs to have abandoned the party’s parliamentary group.

English version: Milena Daynova