Bulgarian President Rumen Radev refused to appoint a caretaker government on Monday, prolonging the country’s political stalemate amid a rift over the nomination of Kalin Stoyanov to continue serving as interior minister.
Radev’s decision indefinitely delays a parliamentary election that was previously announced for Oct. 20. None of the country’s various political forces have managed to create a stable government in the past three years, during which Bulgarian voters have gone to the polls six times.
The president and the parliamentary opposition regard Stoyanov as a confederate of Delyan Peevski, a Bulgarian oligarch sanctioned by the U.S. and U.K. for corruption. Radev said in a Facebook post Monday that “ensuring calming of the political situation and holding fair elections” is “obviously impossible” if Stoyanov remains in his position.
Stoyanov has faced criticism for police violence during political protests, among other complaints.
Radev said he had asked Gorica Grancharova-Kozhareva, the designated acting prime minister in charge of forming a caretaker government, to consider someone else than Stoyanov as interior minister, but she refused.
Bulgaria has suffered political instability since 2020, when thousands of demonstrators protested the capture of state institutions by organized crime.
