Bulgarian Socialist Party signs election coalition deal with five parties including communists

The Bulgarian Socialist Party has signed an election coalition agreement with five other parties for the country’s March 2017 early parliamentary elections.

Under the banner of “BSP for Bulgaria”, the coalition includes Alexander Paunov’s Communist Party of Bulgaria, Emil Georgiev’s Ecoglasnost, Mincho Minchev’s New Dawn, Spas Panchev’s Agrarian Union Alexander Stamboliiski and the Trakiya political club.

The election coalition has fewer members than in previous elections, at the time of then-BSP leader Mihail Mikov.

The Communist Party of Bulgaria, which professes Marxism-Leninism, was from 2001 part of the Coalition for Bulgaria, the BSP-led alliance in elections, headed first by Georgi Purvanov and later by Sergei Stanishev.

Under Kornelia Ninova, leader of the BSP since May 2016, the February 2017 coalition excludes two political formations closely identified with Bulgaria’s Roma minority and that used to be part of the socialist-led coalition alliance – Tsvetelin Kanchev’s Euroroma and Toma Tomov’s European Security and Integration.

Ninova told a February 7 news conference that the coalition now was based on being a “principled coalition for all types of elections” with no unification with formations that previously had nominated competitors to sitting BSP mayors in municipal elections.

The BSP for Bulgaria coalition is to register on February 8 to participate in the March elections.

Ninova said that in addition, bilateral co-operation agreements would be signed with about 10 civic associations and “patriotic unions”.

By February 11, Georgi Atanassov’s Bulgarian Social Democrats party would decide on joining the coalition, the news conference was told.

/Politics

Comments

comments

The Sofia Globe staff

The Sofia Globe - the Sofia-based fully independent English-language news and features website, covering Bulgaria, the Balkans and the EU. Sign up to subscribe to sofiaglobe.com's daily bulletin through the form on our homepage. https://www.patreon.com/user?u=32709292