The threshold that political coalitions will have to pass in Bulgaria's parliamentary elections, to be held in less than three months, has been raised from four to eight per cent.

On April 13 2009, after long debate, two ruling coalition parties - the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the Movement for Right and Freedoms (MRF) - supported by two opposition parties - the Order, Law and Justice (OLJ) party and ultra-nationalist Ataka party - supported the amendment to the Election Act.

The amendment was tabled by OLJ and its leader Yane Yanev, to the surprise of other opposition parties. For almost three weeks, there had been talk that such an amendment would be introduced, with both the BSP and the MRF expressing their support for it, but it was OLJ that tabled the amendment in Parliament.

Yanev said that the increased threshold was a way to keep coalitions made up of dozens of small parties which nobody knew, entering Parliament.

The right-wing opposition said that the amendment was an attempt by the ruling parties to block the newly-formed coalition between two right-wing opposition parties, the Union of Democratic Force UDF) and the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB).

The opposition complained that such a major amendment to election legislation should not be made at the last possible moment, less than three months ahead of elections.

The opposition was also unhappy about amendments introducing an element of the majority electoral system in this year's elections while keeping the proportional representation system.

The amendments have been advocated by President Georgi Purvanov who, in the past year and a half, has urged Parliament to introduce a wider majority element in the election process.

The BSP and the MRF, without the support of their third partner in the ruling coalition, the National Movement for Stability and Progress, but again with the vote of OLJ, adopted an amendment which says that 31 out of the 240 MPs will be elected by majority vote.

Purvanov was pushing for 58 MPs, but the BSP and the MRF decided to leave the number at 31 which is also the number of the electoral regions in the country. The other 209 MPs will be elected under the current proportional representation system.

The opposition said that the amendment favoured the BSP and the MRF because there were regions where the two parties enjoyed strong support [such as the areas with predominantly Muslim Bulgarians who form the core of MRF supporters] which will give the two parties almost certain victories.

Further, the opposition said that the two parties could form alliances and ask their hard core supporters to back each other's candidates and win almost all of the 31 seats.

The other major source of discontent was the fact that all electoral regions, no matter their size, will be able to send just one MP to Parliament as a result of the majority elections. That way, the weight of Sofia's half a million voters will be the same as the weight of regions with just a few thousand voters.

Opposition parties said that they would appeal against the amendment in the Constitutional Court.

With the majority election system, only one member of parliament is to be elected per constituency.

With the proportional representation system several members of parliament are elected per constituency. Basically every political party presents a list of candidates and voters can select a list, that is they vote for a political party. Parties are assigned parliamentary seats proportionally to the number of votes they get.