Bulgaria: War in the MRF – Peevski loyalist hints at breakaway party

Yordan Tsonev, a loyalist of embattled Movement for Rights and Freedoms co-leader Delyan Peevski, hinted in a television interview on July 12 that Peevski – caught up in a power struggle with MRF grandee Ahmed Dogan – may create a breakaway party.

Tsonev, a veteran MP who has been a member of 11 National Assemblies – first with the Union of Democratic Forces, from which he was expelled, and later with the MRF, indicated that the founding of a new party by Peevski could happen as early as next week.

Tsonev’s statement came on the day that two more MRF MP left the parliamentary group, reducing it to 23 members. Following Bulgaria’s June 9 early parliamentary elections, the MRF parliamentary group started out with 47 members.

Between expulsions and resignations, 24 MRF MPs – seen as allied to Dogan, who earlier this week called on Peevski to step down from the party’s leadership – now are “independent” MPs.

Bulgarian media characterised the numbers as “Dogan 24, Peevski 23”. Some within the anti-Peevski faction have predicted that there could be further resignations from the MRF group.

There was no sign of a decrease in tensions between the two camps on Friday, to say nothing of the absence of any immediate prospect of reconciliation, as the faction fighting saw mutual accusations of stoking ethnic tensions.

Peevski is the first to occupy the leadership of the 34-year-old party who is not of ethnic Turkish descent, while he is also seen as having been behind the ouster of MRF veterans who are of ethnic Turkish descent, in a party that long has had ethnic Turk Bulgarians as its core electorate.

Tsonev, interviewed by bTV, alleged that Peevski’s opponents were playing the ethnic card, to which the Dogan camp responded by accusing Tsonev of trying to sow ethnic discord in the party and in Bulgarian society.

In turn, Tsonev responded by alleging that in the past 10 days, MRF people have been told that if they sided with Peevski, they would become traitors to the ethnic Turkish group.

In the bTV interview, Tsonev said that Peevski’s team would together with him, MRF stalwart Iskra Mihailova and the “six mentioned in Ahmed Dogan’s letter”, leave the MRF. The “six” is a reference to those, including Peevski, on whom Dogan called to resign their posts.

Tsonev said that this departure from the MRF would likely happen next week, and that “24 to 25” MPs would follow Peevski (though the figures mentioned by Tsonev are higher than the total of those still in the MRF group). According to Tsonev, the matter of founding the breakaway party was Peevski’s call.

Tsonev said that there was “no war” with Dogan and claimed that Dogan’s letter with the call for the resignations was the result of people around the MRF founder.

The outflow from the MRF parliamentary group has relegated it from being Parliament’s second-largest group to it fourth-largest.

The We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition is now the second-largest group, by virtue of which it is entitled to receive the second mandate to seek to form a government.

On July 12, President Roumen Radev said that he would hand over the second mandate “next week” without being any more precise than that.

(Photo of Tsonev: dps.bg)

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