Yes Bulgaria party elects Mirchev and Bozhanov as co-leaders
At its fourth national conference, held on on April 27, the Yes Bulgaria party – part of the reformist We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria group in the country’s Parliament – elected Ivailo Mirchev and Bozhidar Bozhanov as its co-leaders.
Founded in 2017 by former justice minister Hristo Ivanov, who resigned in June 2024 as party leader because of disappointing election results, Yes Bulgaria joined in coalition with Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria and the Green Movement party in 2018 and is part of opposition WCC-DB, which is the 51st National Assembly’s second-largest group, with 36 MPs in the 240-seat House.
The Mirchev – Bozhanov duo beat two other pairs of candidates, including one that had included a pledge to quit the electoral coalition with WCC.
Bozhanov and Mirchev thanked the delegates who voted for them for their trust and promised to live up to their expectations.
“We will modernise the party and we will modernise the country,” Bozhanov, an IT expert and entrepreneur who was e-government minister in the 2021 Kiril Petkov government, said.
“We work not only on a team principle, we are one team,” said Mirchev, a member of several of Bulgaria’s recent short-lived Parliaments.
“We have to deal with Peevski, who is not only the tip of the iceberg, he really controls the institutions in the state,” Mirchev said, referring to Delyan Peevski, leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning group, who is sanctioned under the US Magnitsky Act for corruption and who is seen as holding sway over Bulgarian’s current coalition government.
“If anyone thinks that the co-chairmanship is a sign of weakness, now they will be convinced of the opposite,” said Mirchev,
Of the six initial candidates for the leadership, former justice minister Nadezhda Yordanova said that if elected, she would take Yes Bulgaria out of the coalition with WCC.
“Yes, I really think that we have very deep ideological differences with WCC, and to be honest, the right-wing space that was seriously vacated by GERB, especially with their recent actions in recent months, provides an opportunity for a right-wing unification that could work in this direction,” she said.
Yordanova was referring to GERB, the centre-right group led by former prime minister Boiko Borissov, which currently is the majority partner in government, with its minority partners the Bulgarian Socialist Party – United Left and populist ITN, and with Peevski’s group also keeping the government in place.
(Photo of Mirchev and Bozhanov: Yes Bulgaria)
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