Sendoff for Radev as Yotova becomes Bulgaria’s first woman President
President Iliana Yotova gave her predecessor Roumen Radev a formal sendoff at the presidency building in Sofia on January 23, a few hours after the Constitutional Court unanimously accepted his resignation as head of state.
Yotova and Radev were saluted by an honour guard, while a large crowd turned out to applaud the two.
Media microphones were too far away to convey the exchange of words between Yotova and Radev at the ceremonial entrance of the presidency building.
Radev spoke briefly to reporters, but gave no clarity about his forthcoming political project. He quickly moved on to greet members of the crowd.
Radev announced his resignation as head of state in a televised address on the evening of January 19, and submitted it to the Constitutional Court on January 20.
Radev was the fifth democratically-elected President of Bulgaria and the first to resign before the expiry of his term. As the constitution provides, on his departure from office, vice president Yotova assumed the duties of president, until the January 2027 end of the term of office to which Radev was elected.
His resignation as president came as Bulgaria heads towards early parliamentary elections in the spring, the eighth time since April 2021 that Bulgarians elect a legislature.
It now falls to Yotova to conduct consultations with parliamentary groups and potential caretaker Prime Ministers, choose one to head an interim government, while the new head of state will also decree a date for the parliamentary elections.
Born in October 1964, Yotova attended the Alphonse de Lamartine French Language School in Sofia and graduated in Bulgarian Philology from Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski.
She did post-graduate studies at the École nationale d’administration and the Centre des Etudes Européennes de Strasbourg.
Yotova worked as a reporter, presenter and director of the news and current affairs department of public broacaster Bulgarian National Television from 1990 to 1997.
From 1997 to 2007, Yotova headed the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) press centre, was a member of the BSP national council from 2000 to 2016 and member of the party’s national council’s executive bureau from 2012 to 2016.
Yotova was a BSP member of Parliament from 2005 to 2007 and from June 2007 to 2017, was a member of the European Parliament in the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group.
She was Roumen Radev’s running mate in the 2016 presidential election, on a socialist-backed ticket, which won at the second round, with 59.37 per cent of the vote, with voter turnout at 51.62 per cent. In 2021, the Radev – Yotova ticket won 66.72 per cent of the vote at the second round, with voter turnout at 34.84 per cent.
Apart from Bulgarian, Yotova speaks French, Russian and English.
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