Ultra-nationalist Ataka party was the only opposition party not to sign the fifth no confidence motion against the Cabinet of Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev. The motion was filed in Parliament on April 4 2008.

The motion was signed by 60 opposition MPs: 48 signatures out of the 240-seat Parliament are required for such a vote to go proceed.  Ataka leader Volen Siderov, one of the harshest critics of the Cabinet, said his party did not sign the motion because it was not forewarned about it by other opposition parties.

However, Ataka announced it would support the motion next week at the vote. According to the regulations of Parliament, the debate on the no confidence motion must take place no sooner than three days and no later than five days from the day it is filed. The actual vote must happen 24 hours after the end of the debate.

The motion of no confidence was file under the grounds of "the Government's ties with organised crime”. The motion refers to the row surrounding the Interior Ministry and the leaks of classified information revealing facts about the ministry's work.

According to the words of Interior Minister Roumen Petkov, he has held meetings with people under investigation “in the best interests of the ministry and Bulgaria”.

The Government easily survived four previous no-confidence motions filed over the last three years. The various motions were advanced against its policies on disaster management, health, education and alleged corruption.

The current majority of 150 MPs will easily allow Stanishev to keep his post with political analysts expecting certain individual MPs from the ruling coalition to support the motion, as was the case in the previous motion in February 2008. Social-democrat Nikolai Kamov was among 86 MPs who supported the no confidence motion on grounds of alleged corruption.

He was duly expelled from the Coalition for Bulgaria group, the largest in Parliament, with the Bulgarian Socialist Party as the dominant party in it.