A special post-election news conference by President Georgi Purvanov at which the former Bulgarian Socialist Party leader said that the BSP had lost because of serious mistakes and that current leader Sergei Stanishev should seek a vote of confidence from the party has been interpreted by some Bulgarian newspapers as Purvanov "turning his back" on the BSP.
 
Purvanov, currently in his second term of office as head of state, was leader of the BSP before becoming President. Many see Stanishev as having been his protégé, and it is generally accepted that Purvanov played a significant role in putting together the current governing coalition led by the BSP after the summer 2005 parliamentary elections.
 
Purvanov said that the BSP had lost the July 5 parliamentary elections because of arrogance and serious mistakes.
 
He said that Stanishev should seek a vote of confidence from the party. At an election night news conference, Stanishev said that he would remain at the helm of the party but it would be the right of anyone at a BSP national council meeting to try to get him ousted.
 
Several observers have noted that at Stanishev’s post-election news conference, several senior party leaders absented themselves from the news conference table, including Roumen Petkov, who was axed as a minister by Stanishev in 2008 and was the head of the BSP’s – unsuccessful – election campaign.
 
At his news conference on July 7 2009, Purvanov congratulated GERB leader Boiko Borissov on his election victory and said that he expected that the new government would be a stable one that would serve out its full term.
 
Even while Borissov went to work building a governing coalition, Purvanov had some advice for the future prime minister, reportedly – according to daily newspaper Monitor – suggesting that the governing coalition should include GERB, the centre-right Blue Coalition and Yane Yanev’s Order Law and Justice party.
 
A tripartite coalition would be more stable, Purvanov said. Earlier, Borrisov said that he did not want to form a coalition on the basis as the outgoing tripartite Cabinet.
 
Purvanov said that he would act without delay as soon as Borissov indicated that he was ready to accept a mandate to form a Cabinet. The president confirmed that he would convene the first sitting of the newly-elected National Assembly, Bulgaria’s unicameral Parliament, on July 14. The mandate will be handed over soon after that.
 
He hoped that Borissov’s new government would move without delay to address the economic crisis, Purvanov said.
 
Purvanov welcomed Borissov’s idea of cutting back the state administration and slashing the salaries paid to those on the boards of state-owned entities. It would send an important moral signal even though it would not go far to addressing the deficit, Purvanov said.
 
Urging the new government to go carefully on the question of energy projects, after the election campaign saw sniping at the Belene and South Stream projects from among right-wing politicians that could now have a role in the new administration, Purvanov said that he hoped that these statements had been electioneering.
 
If Bulgaria did not proceed appropriately, it could lose the South Stream pipeline project route to its northern neighbour Romania, according to Purvanov.
 
However, in a side-swipe at Borissov’s party GERB, Purvanov said that while it had won almost all the majoritarian seats in the mixed electoral system introduced for the July 5 2009 parliamentary elections, these candidates had been elected as a vote for Borissov rather than for GERB.
 
And while the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) was denied seats in Parliament by the electorate, Purvanov said that Meglena Kouneva – currently a European Commissioner and an MEP-elect for the NMSP – should be given a role because of the potential good she could do Bulgaria in the EU.
 
Purvanov said that he was satisfied with the maturity shown at the elections in spite of the aggressive way in which campaigns had been conducted. This maturity had disproven the belief that Bulgaria’s electorate was beset by apathy, Purvanov said.