Bulgaria’s 2019 local elections: The battle for Varna
There are 11 candidates seeking election as mayor of Bulgaria’s largest Black Sea city Varna in the autumn 2019 local elections, including Ivan Portnih, who is seeking a third consecutive term in office.
Portnih is the candidate of Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s centre-right GERB party. At the previous mayoral elections, in 2015, he won a first-round victory with 62 per cent of the vote.
Among rivals from the more significant political parties, he is being faced by Anelia Klisarova, the nominee of the Bulgarian Socialist Party.
Klisarova was Education Minister in the ill-fated “Oresharski” administration of 2013/14. She was a mayoral candidate in 2015, nominally put forward by an initiative committee but seen at the time as really the BSP’s candidate.
This time around, she is officially the BSP’s candidate, but there has been dissension in the party about its mayoral candidate. Reports from Varna said that local socialists had wanted to back the leader of the Vuzrazhdane party, Kostadin Kostadinov.
Kostadinov was a Varna mayoral candidate in 2015, on a ticket backed by Vuzrazhdane and ultra-nationalist Ataka, and before that was a mayoral candidate for Valeri Simeonov’s National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria.
Portnih is standing on his record, including a recent decision to cut prices of student and senior citizens cards for public transport by 25 per cent, the recent extension of Vassil Levski Boulevard – an important thoroughfare in Varna – even though the road was not without its troubles, including defects and a landslide.
Among other parties with national representation, the nationalist VMRO has nominated surgeon Dr Nikolia Evtimov and NFSB the (the latter’s stronghold is in the other Black Sea city, Bourgas, not Varna) business person Dimitar Karbov, who also was a candidate in 2015, garnering a mere handful of votes.
In Varna, the real question on October 27 will be whether Portnih will win a first-round victory, or whether a second round the following Sunday, November 3, will be necessary.
(Photo of Varna, including the city’s municipal headquarters: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
Related:
Bulgaria’s 2019 local elections: Factfile
Bulgaria’s 2019 local elections: The battle for Sofia has begun
Bulgaria’s 2019 local elections: Who will be the next mayor of Plovdiv?
