Renegade MPs to Create Yet Another Bulgarian Nationalist Party

Independent Bulgarian MPs Kiril Gumnerov, Valentin Nikolov and Ognyan Peychev, who recently left the far-right Ataka (Attack) party, have now vowed to create a new nationalist formation.

The MPs will decide whether they will launch the project within the next one or two months, Gumnerov told the Dnevnik daily.

The new party would be the fourth nationalistic one created by Ataka renegades. A month ago, Pavel Chernev, a former deputy chair of the far-right formation, created the Party of the Ordinary Folk. In April, another former Ataka deputy chair, Anton Sirakov, created the New Power formation. Prior to that, Ataka member and owner of the party's former mouthpiece, the Skat TV station, Valeri Simeonov, founded his National Front for Saving Bulgaria.

Nikolov, Peichev and Gumnerov left Ataka's parliamentary group after the accident in front of the Banya Bashi mosque in downtown Sofia on May 20, in which activists of the party assaulted praying Muslims during a rally protesting the mosque's use of loudspeakers. Upon leaving, they said it had been "the last straw".

The renegades also showed documents allegedly proving that MPs from the nationalist party have been forced to sign promissory notes turning them into guarantors of loans taken by offshore companies.

The latest dissent left the group of Ataka, the only ally of the ruling centrist-right GERB,with 17 MPs in the 240-member Parliament. Kamen Petkov left the group in December, 2010.

We need your support so Novinite.com can keep delivering news and information about Bulgaria! Thank you!