A day after “Continuing the change” refused to form a new cabinet within the framework of the 47th National Assembly, the resigned Prime Minister Kiril Petkov spoke exclusively to bTV. He answers the questions of Maria Tsantsarova in an extraordinary edition of the program “Why, Mr. Minister?”
– The “Petkov” cabinet is going down in history, is this how you imagined your path to power?
– I am very proud of the entire team of this cabinet, because Kiril Petkov is simply the title. Many people worked from morning to night. And what we did – we kept our promises. We promised zero tolerance for corruption, we promised to follow the right path to change and although it was much shorter than we imagined, looking back not a single decision broke exactly that promise. We believe that in fact the road will be very long, it will not be one, six months or a few years, it will be years ahead. But if we follow this same principle, I believe that we will achieve this change that we have promised.
– Why, however, did you not manage to find 121 votes in support of this change for a second cabinet within this National Assembly?
– We fought really hard. In fact, the question is who wants to be in the next administration and who would we allow. When we talk about brands like ITN, GERB, DPS – these are inanimate words. In fact, behind each of these words there is a person, and let’s tell them who are the people who actually make decisions. Behind GERB is Mr. Borisov, behind DPS is Mr. Peevski, behind ITN is Mr. Slavi Trifonov with his friend Orlin Alexiev. And really the question was, are we ready to sit together at the same table with one of these people. As Borisov said today: “I am generous, I give three MPs”. This means that these deputies do not make any decisions, only he makes them entirely from the point of view of what he has judged. And what we have decided is that we are not ready and simply because we do not like them, we are not ready because I personally do not believe that Mr. Borisov would like to have a justice system that could put him in prison. He would do everything he could to keep it from getting there, naturally. So there is no way he can be our partner for the change of the judicial system and for the change of the anti-corruption policy. Mr. Slavi Trifonov with his friend Orlin Alexiev – we saw that they asked us to spend BGN 3.9 billion on 8 companies. In reality, we gave BGN 2 billion to the entire Bulgarian people, for all the measures for economic growth, to support pensioners and young families, and they asked for it for 8 companies. Well, we cannot repeat the same mistake twice. The first time we didn’t know who he was, now we know, so he doesn’t become a partner to manage with either. The third person is Mr. Delyan Peevski. I don’t think I have to explain much there, but the entire Bulgarian people will understand that there is no way to change Bulgaria for the better together with them. So when we remove all these supports, the question was do we want to rule with these people or not. And the answer to that question was no.
The second question was can we find people to break away from their addiction to these people. And here we have been working from morning to night in recent weeks, I have personally held so many conversations with the sole purpose of convincing them that if they become independent, we together can make Bulgaria independent.
– Does this mean that you, with such individual deputies who were part of the teams of these three people, can achieve real judicial reform, change the justice system in general?
– Yes, because we saw that the six deputies who broke away from “There is such a people” showed it. In fact, these people were with the idea of change, with the idea of a justice system, with the idea of anti-corruption. They were misled by their leadership. When they saw this, they realized that the betrayal was towards Bulgaria. And they joined us and became zealous supporters of this very policy, in fact, which had been theirs when they came into power. It gave us hope that if there were six there could be six more, and actually that’s why we continued to explore the option of how many of these people are independent, how many of these people are not afraid. From our conversations we found out that there are more people, there are not only 6, there are more, they are just afraid and it is scary. It’s scary to say “no” to a leader who really has such mafia behavior, has security… I’m talking about both Slavi Trifonov and Mr. Borisov. I don’t know if you know, but going to Mr. Borisov with the cigar, you are going to someone from Sicily. So to say to such a person, “I am brave, I want to stand with
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