Bulgaria’s 2024 elections: Rival factions in MRF, BSP, continue to try to outmanoeuvre each other
The respective rival factions in strife-torn parties the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) and the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) continued to try to outmanoeuvre each other on September 9 as the process of registration for the October early elections continued, with the deadline mere days away.
As The Sofia Globe reported earlier, the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) refused, in unanimous decisions on September 9, to approve the registration as coalitions of Delyan Peevski’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning and MRF founder and honorary president Ahmed Dogan’s MRF – Democracy, Rights and Freedoms.
Bulgarian election law forbids a party to be registered as part of more than electoral coalition.
The CEC had given the two coalitions until 5pm on September 7 to show that the MRF was not part of their respective coalitions. Both refused to submit documents to this end.
On September 9, the Dogan faction sought to steal a march on the Peevski faction by submitting an application for a stand-alone MRF participation in the October elections with Dogan as leader and Dzhevdet Chakurov as chairman.
The Dogan faction presented application documentation to the CEC with 5240 signatures, according to a brief statement on the MRF website, which is currently under control of the Dogan group. Control of the MRF official website has switched back and forth since the faction fighting began.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Administrative Court ruled that it would not proceed with a case lodged by the Dogan faction against a CEC decision that had called on both factions to prove that the MRF was not part of more than one faction.
At the weekend, the Dogan faction said that it had lodged the case, but later said that it was withdrawing it.
Peevski, reacting to the Dogan faction’s September 9 registration application, called on the CEC to have the application withdrawn.
Meanwhile, among the latest episodes in the faction fighting in the BSP, between its acting leadership and those loyal to ousted former leader Kornelia Ninova, two Ninova loyalists – Georgi Svilenski and Ivan Chenchev – sought on September 9 to pre-empt a court decision by submitting an application to the CEC for participation in the election.
On September 9, the Supreme Court of Cassation held a hearing on the case of the dispute between the acting leadership and the Ninova group regarding the official court registration of representation of the BSP.
Ninova’s refusal to confer power of attorney to represent the BSP on acting leader Atanas Zafirov earlier prompted the BSP national council to expel Ninova and her loyalists from the party.
Though the Sofia City Court had ruled that Zafirov must be registered as representing the party, Ninova remains an official representative, in spite of having been kicked out of the party.
The Ninova camp argues that her resignation as party leader – submitted after she led the BSP to its latest electoral catastrophe – may only be accepted by a party congress, and one has not been held. This camp holds that the Sofia City Court ruling to admit Zafirov as a representative of the party was premature.
A statement on September on the official BSP website – which is controlled by the acting leadership – said that the BSP would stand in the October 27 elections in the BSP-United Left coalition. This coalition involves about 15 minuscule left-wing parties.
“We will not allow the 133-year-old party of the Bulgarian Socialists to be stolen by a few people, in violation of the decisions of the collective bodies of the party and contrary to morality and political logic,” said the statement, issued in the name of the BSP executive bureau.
“Their continued attempts to abuse the name of the party, bring division and demotivate the socialists and sympathizers of the left idea now evoke only pity and derision,” it said.
The documents submitted to the CEC for the registration of the BSP by Svilenski and Chenchev – persons who are no longer members of the BSP, representing Ninova, who is no longer either the leader or a member of the BSP, with a signature that was not collected by the legitimate local structures of the party, was an attempt to deliberately harm both the BSP and the broad left coalition.
“This is done in the interest of forces that do not want a strong Bulgarian left,” the statement said.
It said that it would apply for registration of the BSP-United Left as soon as the Supreme Court of Cassation ruled.
“We expect the CEC to reject registration based on the documents submitted today by Georgi Svilenski and Ivan Chenchev, because parties, not stolen abbreviations, should participate in elections,” the statement said.
(Photo, of the submission of documents on behalf of the MRF Dogan faction: MRF)
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