A second front opens against the Blue Coalition

Adelina Marini, April 30, 2009

The battle against the Blue coalition in Bulgaria is exasperating. Although some months ago the not-very-former* leader of the Union of the democratic forces (UDF) Plamen Yurukov stated that he would not run for a second term, today he filed a registration bid on behalf of the UDF for the European elections at the Central electoral committee, scheduled for the 7th of June. This happened only couple of hours after the Higher court has returned the case for the registration of the leadership of Martin Dimitrov to the City court but without clearly enacting his registration. Thus, there are a lot of chances that the power vacuum in the UDF to be filled by the not-very-former leader Plamen Yurukov who is against the Blue coalition with the Democrats for a strong Bulgaria of Ivan Kostov. Thus it is guaranteed that if the Blue coalition would have had any chances to go over the 8 % barrier for coalitions to enter the Parliament, now it is not quite clear whether there will be a Blue coalition. This means that the following parties will for sure form the next Parliament: the Bulgarian socialist party, GERB, the Movement for rights and freedoms, ATAKA, Order, rule of law, security. In other words the next government will be formed by one or some of those parties.

*not-very-former because after the internal elections in the UDF Martin Dimitrov has been elected leader of the Union. But then, strangely, an objection was filed with the argument that the election was in distortion with the statute of the party. The City court ruled out recently that, indeed, the election of Dimitrov was against the rules of the party. The court though used very political motives to explain its ruling which was rejected by the High court today.

European elections 2009