Sergei Stanishev’s leadership of the Bulgarian Socialist Party is being called into question from within the party, with calls for a special national congress in the wake of the party’s defeat in the July 2009 parliamentary elections and at least one alternative candidate for the leadership emerging.
 
The most recent attack has come in an interview published in mass-circulation daily Trud on July 16, given by Tatyana Doncheva, a former MP and long-time critic of Stanishev, and a former failed BSP candidate for mayor of Sofia.
 
Doncheva told Trud that public attitudes towards the BSP were not only negative but ran to hatred, and this was very alarming.
 
The current party leadership should be "radically changed," Doncheva said. When confidence was gone, it was time for something new to be found, she told Trud.
 
There was no comfort in seeing a team to which she had dedicated the past 20 years of her life sliding to the bottom. If current trends continued, the BSP would not make it into Parliament in the next elections, Doncheva said in an interview with Bulgarian National Television.
 
The problem in the BSP was not only with its leadership but also the way the party had worked in recent years, with people being appointed to posts simply because they were close to the party leadership, even though they lacked popular support and lacked intellect, she said.
 
Bulgarian-language daily Monitor said in a commentary on July 16 that the crisis in the BSP was not one of leadership or of ideas but a lack of people with prestige who were not afraid to assume responsibility.
 
A key left-wing figure in the BSP, Yanaki Stoilov, has said publicly that he is available to take over as party leader.
 
Stoilov, one of a group of left-wingers who met on July 12 to discuss the fallout from the BSP’s election defeat, which saw it ousted from its place as the current majority partner in government by Boiko Borissov’s party GERB, said that rather than the national council meeting scheduled for July 18, the party should convene a special national congress.
 
The national council is the highest decision-making authority between national congresses. The next national congress is scheduled for September 2009.
 
Stanishev has said that he would ask for a vote of confidence, but observers have noted that if this is done at a national council meeting where he still has a number of supporters, he could survive. The outcome of a national congress, bringing in grassroots and other factions of the party, could turn out differently.
 
Stoilov said that if Stanishev won a vote of confidence at an ordinary national council meeting, this could achieve nothing but being divisive.

Bulgarian National Radio reported Stoilov as saying that the main problem was that the BSP had failed to come up with and carry through a new socio-economic policy. This was because the party was headed by a rightist social-liberal wing, Stoilov said.
 
Other damaging factors had been the BSP’s association in public perceptions with Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and the stigma of corruption associated with the BSP, Stoilov said.
 
On July 13, former BSP leader Alexander Lilov told Trud that there was collective responsibility for the BSP’s defeat.
 
It was obvious from the "serious political mistakes" that had been made that the party’s leadership and structures were not in good condition, Lilov said.
 
It was not possible to suffer such an unprecedented loss and want to remain leader.
 
Stanishev should think long and hard about his future and then announce a decision in public rather than divide the party, Lilov said.
 
"It is a matter of principle, of personal political dignity," Lilov said.
 
In an interview with Bulgarian-language Novinar, political commentator Petar-Emil Mitev said that Stanishev had sought to project himself as a leader acceptable to the young voter, and this had proved to be not enough.
 
The aggressive public relations campaign had backfired by mobilising those who were against the BSP, a fatal mistake for which the party leader was responsible, Mitev said.
 
On July 10, it emerged that the Open Forum movement within the BSP had called for a special national congress. Open Forum leader Krassimir Premyanov said that it should be at this event that Stanishev faces a vote on the question of confidence in him.
 
Mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa said the same day that BSP hardliners from  Sofia had sent an open letter to BSP headquarters demanding a congress in the autumn; however, they advised Stanishev not to succumb to any calls for his resignation but to  expel half of the members of the Executive Bureau along with Kiril Dobrev, member of the Supreme Council of the BSP, Bulgarian news agency BTA said.
 
BSP Sofia leader Roumen Ovcharov said that he would not ask for Stanishev’s resignation but the party had made a mistake in allowing Dogan’s MRF to "feudalise" the ministries.
 
Among the first to make a frank call for Stanishev to quit after the election was Mladen Chervenyankov, a member of the BSP Supreme Council.
 
"The whole party leadership must go," Chervenyankov told Trud.
 
"All tactical mistakes we have made, from the revision of the electoral law to the introduction of majoritarian elements in the election system, using pressure to hinder the registration of the Blue Coalition and the negative ads, are the consequence of a policy we have been following as a  party for a decade - a policy of conformism and doing nothing," Chervenyakov said.
 
Political scientist Tatyana Bouroudjieva, writing in daily Sega on July 10, said that the fact that Stanishev was unwilling to resign was not doing him a favour.
 
"That is why the question is rather about trench warfare, the winning of which depends on the opponents' tactical skills and patience," Bouroudjieva said.