Bulgaria’s Minister of Education, Youth and Science Yordanka Fandukova is the choice of Boiko Borissov’s ruling party GERB to be its candidate for mayor of Sofia in the by-election scheduled for November 15 2009, GERB chairman Tsvetan Tsvetanov said.
 
A vacancy for mayor of Sofia opened when Borissov became Prime Minister on July 27 2009.
 
With Borissov’s party having climbed even further in opinion polls after it won the July national parliamentary elections, its candidate for mayor of Sofia would be the one to beat.
 
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Speaking on September 17 2009 ahead of a meeting of the Sofia branch of the party that was scheduled to formally name the candidate, Tsvetanov – who is Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister – said that Fandukova was the "indisputable" GERB candidate, Bulgarian news agency Focus said.
 
Tsvetanov was quoted as saying that GERB would stand alone at the election, but was happy with the support of other parties affiliated to the European People’s Party.
 
The centre-right Blue Coalition, formed by the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), has not yet named a candidate but reportedly has been considering a joint candidate and is considering supporting the candidate named by GERB.
 
The two major constituent parties in the Blue Coalition co-operated with a joint candidate in the previous mayoral election in Sofia, putting up Martin Zaimov, who came second after Borissov.
 
Speaking to television station bTV, Blue Coalition co-leader Martin Dimitrov of the UDF said that there were negotiations between his party and the UDF on a joint candidate.
 
Dimitrov, interviewed before Tsvetanov’s statement about Fandukova, said that he hoped that the GERB candidate would be someone "acceptable to us", adding that "we have already worked out some conditions for a programme".
 
The Blue Coalition has been generally supportive of the GERB national government but has no formal coalition agreement with Borissov’s party, exploratory talks on the issue having come to nothing and with Borissov choosing to rule with a Cabinet made up solely of members of his own party.

Bulgarian-language Dnevnik said on September 17 that the Blue Coalition would support Fandukova in a deal with GERB that would see the Blue Coalition included in a Fandukova municipal administration.
 
The only significant party to have confirmed its candidate for mayor of Sofia is the Bulgarian Socialist Party, although the Sofia branch’s nomination of Georgi Kadiev has seen dissension expressed in public about the choice.

Kadiev, born in Bourgas and educated in Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, is a former journalist, former BSP MP and was a deputy minister of finance for part of the 2005 – 2009 term of office of the government headed by BSP leader Sergei Stanishev.
 
Stanishev, who has been politically embattled since leading his party to defeat in the 2009 European Parliament and national parliamentary elections, has taken issue in public with the choice of Kadiev, saying that the BSP should choose a candidate with broad appeal who could motivate an electorate wider than that of just the BSP faithful to come out to vote.