Bulgarian Rightists Reelect Ex PM as Leader

Domestic | November 26, 2011, Saturday // 16:31|  views

Ivan Kostov (front) was reelected as a leader of his party DSB. Photo by BGNES

Bulgaria's PM in 1997-2001 Ivan Kostov has been reelected as chairman of his party, "Democrats for Strong Bulgaria", at a national congress of the party in Sofia.

A total of 929 delegates out of 932 voted in favor of Kostov's reelection, 2 abstained, and one voted against.

Kostov was the only one nominated for a chair of the rightist formation that he founded in 2003.

Svetoslav Malinov and Radan Kanev were elected as his deputies, while Kalin Yanakiev, Ekaterina Mihaylova, Dimitar Bachvarov, Petar Moskov, Proshko Proshkov (who came in third in Sofia's mayoral elections last month), Daniel Mitov, Dimitar Syarov, and Daniela Zhelyazkova were elected to members of the party's national council.

"We have risen up against the ruling party GEBR because it is governing with a parliamentary majority made up of "independent" MPs who have been racketeered and bribed; because Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has scandalously rehabilitated Bulgaria's communist dictator Todor Zhivkov," Kostov declared before the delegates of the Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party.

He further blamed the Borisov Cabinet and the GERB party for "restoring the fear of the repressive state apparatus because they bought votes and crusher the voters at the last elections."

In a report that he read before his party, Kostov said DSB had supported the Borisov Cabinet for 14 months at the beginning of its term because of the promises the GERB party had made.

"We used to support them because they had promised to remove and punish the corrupt and criminal politicians of the previous government of the three-way coalition," stated the former PM regarding Bulgaria's Cabinet in 2005-2009, which was made up the Bulgarian Socialist Party led by Sergey Stanishev, the National Movement for Stability and Prosperity of ex Tsar and ex PM Simeon Saxe-Coburg, and the ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) of Ahmed Dogan.

Kostov did stress, however, that in the summer of 2010 "it became clear that GERB doesn't want to carry out any reforms", which is why the DSB party steered away from them.

"The dependencies of Prime Minister Borisov replaced the mafia that had been in place, and corruption was replaced with racketeering," Kostov stated.

The ex PM largely blamed the crisis of the Blue Coalition – in which the DSB is an equal partner with the rightist Union of Democratic Forces – to his coalition partners.

"The great problem before the Blue Coalition is that the hopes with which it was founded cannot be realized in this Parliament. We are still going to support the parliamentary group of the Blue Coalition out of loyalty for the choice of the voters," Kostov said further.

Kostov created the DSB party in 2003 by splitting off from the original UDF (Union of Democratic Forces), Bulgaria's major pro-democracy, pro-Western party of the 1990s, after he lost the 2001 general elections to ex Tsar Simeon Saxe-Coburg after 4 years in power.

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Tags: Ivan Kostov, Blue Coalition, DSB, Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, GERB, Boyko Borisov, Prime Minister, three-way coalition, Three-Way Coalition cabinet, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, UDF, Union of Democratic Forces, elections 2011, Presidential elections, local elections, racketeering, corruption, Martin Dimitrov, Proshko Proshkov, rightist, RIGHTISTS

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