Bulgaria's Top Cop Passionately behind Ruling Party's Presidential Runner

Bulgaria's Interior Minister and head of the ruling centrist-right GERB's electoral campaign Tsvetan Tsvetanov has declared he firmly supports the party's candidate for the upcoming presidential elections in the country, Rosen Plevneliev.

"I am the person that wants Plevneliev's victory most strongly," Tsvetanov, who initially was among the names rumored as GERB's potential candidates, has said, as cited by the Bulgarian Telegraph Agency.

On Friday, Tsvetanov said Plevneliev told him back in 2007 that three municipal councilmen from the City Hall, known as the "municipal brokers," asked him for a bribe of EUR 500 000 to secure his ownership of a small land plot in the Sofia Business Park, one of the top projects of the GERB presidential nomination as a businessman, before entering politics. He stated that Plevneliev had declined reporting the extortion case.

Tsvetanov revealed that while speaking for journalists in the second largest city of Plovdiv during the seminar "Elections 2011 – Mobilizing Institutions and Citizens for Honest and Free Election Process.

Tsvetanov made the revelation in an attempt to present Plevneliev as an honest businessman, who would never accept a bribe or participate in slander. However, the oppositional left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) suspected the Interior Minister of trying to frame his party's presidential runner.

On Wednesday, Tsvetanov also praised the acting skills of Stefan Danailov, a top Bulgarian actor who was endorsed as BSP's candidate for vice president.

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