A week after the start of the campaign for Bulgaria’s June 7 European Parliament elections, the opposition identified its enemy among the ruling Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) in the form of Azer Melikov, a political adviser to Prime Minister and BSP leader Sergei Stanishev.

On May 25, two of the right-wing political forces running for European Parliament, the Blue Coalition and Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov’s party the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (abbreviated as GERB in Bulgarian), asked Stanishev to remove Melikov from the board of the state-owned company that will count the results of the European Parliament elections and the national parliamentary elections on July 5.

The reason, the two political forces say, is that Melikov was still a political adviser to Stanishev and could influence how Information Services (IS) counts the ballots.
The opposition was motivated by the scandal that followed the launch of the boykostov.org website a few days ahead of the elections campaign. The website’s message is "If you vote for Boiko you will get Kostov", claiming that Borissov was joining forces with Ivan Kostov, leader of the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, part of the Blue Coalition.

Billboards for the campaign were paid for by the small-scale party Nova Zora, but an investigation by Re:TV channel found that the website was first registered on April 23 under Melikov’s name, only to be changed later to Ivan Petrov, one of the most common combinations of names in Bulgaria.

The reaction of Bulgarian media to the row around Melikov and his alleged involvement in the campaign against Borissov and Kostov (both have said that despite their similar political outlook, they will not form a coalition) was more than negative.

Indeed, if it turns out to be true that Stanishev’s political adviser is directly involved in the dirty tricks campaign against BSP’s most powerful political opponent, Borissov, this would put a stain on Stanishev’s reputation  a month before parliamentary elections.

It is also true that anybody could register any domain under any name, so Melikov could also be a victim of someone’s plan to portray Stanishev and the BSP as the mastermind behind the anti-Borissov campaign.

Reactions
All eyes were on Stanishev, whose first reaction to the scandal came more than a week after it broke in the media.

Only after both the Blue Coalition and GERB lodged official complaints with the Central Election Commission (CEC) about Melikov’s alleged interference in the election campaign, Stanishev decided to speak to the media.

Instead of addressing the issue itself, he chose to attack his opponents, saying on May 26 that "someone is just looking for excuses, feeling their coming loss at the elections".
Stanishev insisted that the CEC explain to all parties the procedure by which election results will be counted. Stanishev said that IS had tallied the results of the 2005 elections for Parliament and 2007 municipal and European Parliament elections, but "back then the results suited certain people and they never complained about the company".

Stanishev made the comment after signing a coalition agreement for the July 5 national parliamentary elections with six small-scale parties, among them Nova Zora, whose leader Mincho Minchev publicly said that he was behind the anti-Borissov posters. Besides defending the company’s professionalism and good reputation, Stanishev said nothing about Melikov, which fuelled speculation about his associate.     

Who is Melikov?
For a public official, Melikov has little or no information about him available on the internet. What is known for certain about him is that he used to be a political functionary of the BSP working for its international department (as did Stanishev before he was elected BSP leader) before the party formed a coalition government in 2005. After that, Melikov was appointed to Stanishev’s political council, together with seven others.

The other publicly available information about him is that he is chairperson of the board of directors of Information Services PLC. The company’s website has no information about its management or board members, despite its image as one of the leading IT companies in the country with decades of history. Other than that, Melikov is basically a figure of mystery to the Bulgarian media, if one does not count all the speculation about him in the yellow media.

What is certain is that so far he has the full support of Stanishev, who has not said a word in public, not only about Melikov, but about any of the other members of his political cabinet. With the media attention Melikov got after the boykostov.org website story broke, his obscurity is likely to be brought to an end.