Boiko Borissov, leader of the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), has made a series of harshly critical statements against Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev and his Bulgarian Socialist Party in the days since a confrontation between a Stanishev-led BSP group and GERB supporters in Borissov’s Bankya birthplace.
 
On June 20 2009, the BSP went to Bankya for an election campaign launch event, to be met by a large group of GERB supporters, holding posters of Borissov, booing and making aggressive gestures.
 
BSP supporters managed to get hold of some of the Borissov posters and tore them up, and some threw red roses – the BSP party symbol – at the GERB group.
 
The incident has been edited into a BSP television advert, leading Borissov to say that the event was planned as a deliberate confrontation.
 
There may be speculation in some quarters that after the July 5 national parliamentary elections are over, GERB and the BSP will form a coalition on the basis of respectively having the largest shares of the vote, but Borissov is being unrelenting in his criticism of the BSP-led tripartite coalition Cabinet’s shortcomings.
 
Reinforcing the GERB message that it does not want to serve in a coalition with the parties currently in the tripartite coalition, GERB chairman Tsvetan Tsvetanov said that he would quit Parliament if the party went into coalition with the BSP, according to a June 22 report in mass-circulation daily Trud.
 
Borissov has hit out at the Cabinet for burning up the Budget, and, he says, for putting the National Health Insurance Fund at risk of bankruptcy.
 
"Retribution is coming," Borissov said of the current ruling coalition, according to a report by Bulgarian news agency Focus on June 21.
 
A key campaign message from Stanishev has been based on what he presents as the current Government’s good stewardship of Bulgaria’s economy.
 
Stanishev has highlighted a Cabinet decision earlier in June to cut government expenses, which he says will save Bulgaria about 500 million leva.
 
But Borissov has been keen to say that Stanishev has been less than forthcoming about incidents other than Bankya that show the unpopularity of the Prime Minister.
 
Borissov said on June 23 that while the BSP campaign video showed Stanishev being hissed in Bankya, there had been incidents elsewhere, including in Varna where Stanishev heads the BSP ticket, where he had been hissed.
 
"When BSP supporters threw eggs at me during an official ceremony opening a kindergarden in Krasna Polyana, I didn’t react, just explained that people like those govern us," said Sofia mayor Borissov. "It is obvious that the BSP went to Bankya with the sole goal of provocation".
 
On June 24, he repeated the message. "Stanishev was hissed in the towns of Vratsa and Varna but he didn’t make a video there. Stanishev sniggered there for one hour and provoked people. But, however, a blessing in disguise," Borissov said.
 
Stanishev said on June 23 that he had been "surprised" by the incident in Bankya.
 
"If your party is a democratic one you have to learn how to be democratic first. The proposed alternative is dangerous for Bulgaria’s democracy. It will bring the country backwards and will cause serious consequences," Stanishev said.
 
Borissov also expressed concern that the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe would not be monitoring Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections.
 
A "monstrous manipulation" was in preparation by the ruling coalition for the elections, Borissov said on June 25.
 
Vote-rigging by Stanishev and Ahmed Dogan, leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a minority partner in the coalition, would threaten the political environment. However, Stanishev and Dogan would bear the consequences of this, Borissov said.
 
Speaking on June 25 at the closing sitting of Parliament before it is prorogued for the elections, Stanishev praised the ruling coalition, saying that it had taken measures that had been necessary if sometimes unpopular, and that it had survived seven attempts to oust it through votes of no confidence.