Bulgaria's government has expectedly survived its first no-confidence vote, initiated last week by the two major opposition formations – the Socialist party (BSP) and the ethnic Turkish party DPS.
Friday morning the motion was supported by 70 votes and received 144 votes "against" and 1 abstained.

The opposition submitted to the Parliament on Friday a motion of no-confidence vote against the government of the center-right Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party pver "the failure of its police in health care."

The opposition parties have stated they had not expect to receive the needed votes. The leader of the socialists, Sergey Stanishev, has announced that the vote had already succeeded because it had managed to cause a wide public discussion on the problems in the health care.

The no-confidence vote was submitted just a day after the cabinet announced the name of the new Health Minister, Stefan Konstantinov, who replaced the ousted Anna-Maria Borisova.

Stanishev has reiterated the replacement of the health minister in no way replaces the grounds for the vote and the situation in the health care sector, which suffers the result of year-long experiments and has reached the state of total chaos and collapse.