Faceoff for Bulgaria's Wannabe Socialist Leaders

The Saturday congress of the main opposition party in Bulgaria – the Bulgarian Socialist Party will gather together 842 delegates. File photo by Sofia Photo Agency

The left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, is holding its 48th congress Saturday to elect the new party leader.

The front runners are the current leader and former Prime Minister, Sergey Stanishev, and former President, Georgi Parvanov, who served 2 terms in office (2002 – 2012).

There are 842 delegates – 107 are 35 years of age and younger, 771 have college degrees. The younger delegate is 20, the older is 80. There are also 2 500 invited guests.

Stanishev has 179 nominations from municipal Socialist conferences while Parvanov has 82.

As soon as he left the Presidential Office at the beginning of 2012, Parvanov declared he wants to take over the party's helm again (he was BSP leader before becoming President) while Stanishev made it clear he has no intentions to give up on the leadership.

After that the two traveled across the country for months to gather support and blasted each other in the media. Parvanov recently stated that the current BSP leadership has given BGN 1 M for black PR against him, something Stanishev vehemently denied.

The vote will be held at 8 pm Saturday and the winner will be known late in the evening.

The congress if also going to propose an alternative, unified, common vision for the political advancement of the party and the advancement of the country under the motto "For New Social Bulgaria," and will debate the main goal of winning the 2013 general elections.

Stanishev will open the forum with a report about the current state of the party and the strategic steps for giving Bulgarians an alternative and scoring election victory.

The congress will further adopt a political resolution "The Contemporary Crisis and Bulgaria Tomorrow – the Socialist Response."

The Socialists are adamant that they must take again the responsibility for democratic changes in the country, build a modern European State and give back Bulgaria to its citizens by throwing out the rule of the "mutras" (organized crime leaders). They also voice readiness to seek a large political and social consensus with other parties and NGOs and apply joint effort to bring to an end violations and manipulations during the election process.

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