Bulgaria’s November 2021 elections: Hristo Ivanov resigns as Yes Bulgaria party leader
Hristo Ivanov announced on November 15 his resignation as the leader of the Yes Bulgaria party following the Democratic Bulgaria coalition’s poor results in the November 14 elections.
Yes Bulgaria is a constituent party of the coalition, of which Ivanov is co-leader.
With close to 76 per cent of the vote counted, Democratic Bulgaria was shown to have just less than six per cent, compared with the coalition’s 9.45 per cent in the April regular elections and 12.6 per cent in the July early parliamentary elections.
Ivanov said that he was taking personal responsibility and resigning, as was the party’s executive board.
He said that he would propose to the national council to give a mandate to the future parliamentary group of Democratic Bulgaria to enter into talks with the We Continue the Change party, shown by provisional results to have won the largest share of votes and which thus would be first to receive a mandate to seek to form a government.
Ivanov listed several reasons for the poor result, including the handling of the election campaign, the combination of the parliamentary and presidential election campaigns, the messages, the personnel on the candidate lists and the organisational state of Yes Bulgaria.
Lozan Panov, endorsed by Democratic Bulgaria in the November 14 presidential elections, turned in a disastrous performance.
A few hours after Ivanov’s announcement, Atanas Atanassov said that he was resigning as leader of the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria party, another of the constituent parties of the Democratic Bulgaria coalition, of which Atanassov is co-leader.
On November 15, Christian Vigenin announced his resignation as head of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) national election headquarters.
Kornelia Ninova’s BSP got a provisional 10.35 per cent of the vote in November 14’s early parliamentary elections, down from 15.01 per cent in April and 13.4 per cent in July.
Ninova, who since becoming BSP leader in 2016 has consistently led her party to ever-worsening defeats, equally consistently refusing to resign after each one, told an election night news conference that the question of her resignation as party leader had not been discussed.
November 15 saw prominent BSP members call for Ninova to step down as party leader.
Vigenin posted on Facebook that he was not a fan of revelations about internal party matters on the social network “so I will share my analysis first at the upcoming party forums”.
The entire leadership of the ultra-nationalist VMRO party announced its resignation on November 15. The VMRO was part of an ultra-nationalist coalition that was the minority partner in Boiko Borissov’s third government. Partial results showed that on November 15, VMRO got one per cent of the vote.
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