Former Bulgaria PM Stanishev Reelected Socialist Party Leader

Party functionaries congratulate BSP Chair Stanishev on his reelection. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's former Prime Minister, Sergey Stanishev, has been reelected as the Chair of the Bulgarian Socialist Party during the emergency Party Congress Sunday night.

Stanishev has received some 60% of the votes of the 900 delegates who took party in the 47th Congress of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, which was called up in order to discuss the situation and the direction of the party after it lost the July Parliamentary Elections to Boyko Borisov's GERB (GERB - 40% of the votes, BSP - 18%).

Stanishev, who led Bulgaria's three-way coalition government in 2005-2009, made up of BSP, the National Movement for Security and Prosperity of former Tsar Saxe-Coburg, and the ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), gave an one-hour speech at the beginning of the Congress where he accounted for his term as Prime Minister and for his vision for the Socialist Party.

Stanishev had refused to resign after the election loss, and did so only in his speech at Sunday’s Congress, only to run again for the Party Chair position within a couple of hours later the same day.

The holding of elections for a new leader was not originally on the agenda of the Congress, and was added to it once the former Prime Minister told the delegates to decide on whether he or somebody else should head the party.

Stanishev faced three other bidders for the top job at the Socialist Party – MPs Mladen Chervenyakov, Tatyana Donchev, and Yanaki Stoilov, who is the known leader of the "left-wing" at the BSP.

Tatyana Doncheva, who is known as an outspoken critic of the BSP and the government that it led, received 16% of the votes. The left-wing leader Stoilov remained third with 15%, and MP Chervenyakov got 10%.

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