The centre-right Order, Law and Justice (OLJ) party of Yane Yanev has lost the support of another of its MPs in Parliament after Dimitar Choukarski announced that he was leaving the party, news agencies said on March 11 2010.

Explaining his decision, Chouikarski told reporters that he opposed the radicalisation of the party's policy, Bulgarian Focus news agency said.

OLJ's policy proved too extreme for his taste, Focus quoted him as saying. "Political struggles should be fought in Parliament where decisions are taken," he said, referring to OLJ's decision to boycott Parliament's sessions in protest against Prime Minister Boiko Borissov's Cabinet and instead stage meetings around the country.

"I am coming back to Parliament," Choukarski said, adding that, henceforth, he would sit as an independent MP.

He was referring to the fact that the parliamentary group of OLJ ceased to exist in December 2009 after Mario Tagarinski's request to leave the OLJ group and become an independent MP.

According to parliamentary rules, a parliamentary group has to have at least 10 members. With Tagarinski gone, the OLJ group was reduced to nine and was automatically disbanded, turning all OLJ MPs into independent MPs.

According to Parliament's rules, MPs who have left their groups (or have become independent as a result of their groups ceasing to exist) are not allowed to join another parliamentary group and must remain independent for the remainder of Parliament's term.

Now, with Choukarski out, OLJ will, in theory, have eight MPs in Parliament. When asked whether Choukarski would support the policy of the ruling majority and the Government, he said that he had supported it before and will continue to do so.

Choukarski is the third OLJ official to leave the party in the past four months. The biggest blow to Yanev, however, came on February 4 2010 when his close political partner Dimitar Abadjiev announced his decision to leave.

In an interview with Bulgarian-language 24 Chassa daily, Abadjiev said that his motives were personal. "I don't think that I can be useful to the project (the OLJ) at this stage," he said.

"My role in the OLJ was to help it become part of the European Conservatives' project," Abadjiev said, referring to the European Conservatives and Reformists group in European Parliament.

"My job was to get OLJ international support. Now that we failed to win seats in European Parliament, this possibility is highly limited," he said. Abadjiev topped the OLJ ticket for the June 7 2009 MEPs elections but failed to win a seat. He also failed to win a seat in Bulgarian Parliament at the July 2009 elections.