Trends in recent opinion polls about Prime Minister Boiko Borissov, his party GERB, and GERB’s candidate for Sofia mayor Yordanka Fandukova suggest that her election as mayor of Sofia on November 15 2009 is a certainty.
 
A Centre for Analysis and Marketing poll in early October produced a 70 per cent approval rating for Borissov’s performance when he was mayor – a post he relinquished to become prime ministers, necessitating the mayoral by-elections; and high opinions of Fandukova, suggesting that she would pull off a first-round victory.
 
Elsewhere among Bulgaria’s political parties, the question of the mayoral elections in the capital city has prompted in-fighting and, within some right-wing parties, dissension about whether to endorse GERB’s Fandukova, who was named the party’s candidate in September, just a few short months after becoming Education Minister, a move up from having been Sofia deputy mayor in charge of education.
 
If polls are correct, Fandukova’s candidacy should be a cruise. For other parties, the saga has meant bruises.
 
The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), which trailed a poor second to Borissov’s party in the July 2009 parliamentary elections and in the June 2009 European Parliament elections, has nominated Georgi Kadiev for the post of mayor, but not without a very public battle symptomatic of the vicious faction-fighting in the BSP after its electoral defeats.
 
Kadiev, who for some time was a deputy finance minister in the 2005-2009 BSP-led tripartite coalition government, has exchanged sniper fire in public with BSP leader Sergei Stanishev, with Stanishev openly undermining him and with Kadiev saying that, in any case, he did not want Stanishev’s support.
 
If the picture among GERB’s political foes is astonishing, the saga equally has not been easy for its fellow centre-right parties.
 
There have been conflicting reports – and reports of conflict – about the positions taken by the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), the two parties that constitute the Blue Coalition, the centre-right formation that in the first few months of Borissov’s administration publicly have been generally supportive, although initial talk of a formal governing coalition at national level came to nothing.
 
Ivan Kostov’s DSB has endorsed Fandukova’s candidacy formally, but not without an open argument at a meeting of senior party leaders on October 3. Some within the DSB fear for the future of the party’s profile if it is perceived as merely trailing on Borissov’s coat-tails.
 
Speaking at the meeting of the DSB’s chairperson’s council, party chairperson Atanas Atanasov said that the body had decided to endorse Fandukova, and party members should remember that the question was about mayoral elections.
 
Should the DSB field its own candidate, this would torpedo the Blue Coalition, which the DSB should rather be working to strengthen and widen, Atanasov was quoted as saying by Bulgarian news agency Focus.
 
With the UDF, uncertainty has lingered for weeks.
 
Media reports that the UDF and DSB were negotiating with GERB for a formal joint endorsement in return for the two smaller parties each being given a deputy mayor’s post were rejected as untrue by UDF leader Martin Dimitrov.
 
Suddenly, when most political observers believed that UDF endorsement of the GERB candidate appeared to be a certainty, Dimitrov said on October 6 that his party might field its own candidate.
 
He said, according to a report in Bulgarian-language mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa, that a GERB-UDF-DSB (or GERB-Blue Coalition) joint ticket under Fandukova’s name was an option, but there was as yet not agreement on some specific policies.
 
One of the issues sparking debate in the UDF is that endorsement of Fandukova would mean that it would be the first time that the party, formerly a formidable political force that was in national government for a term ending in 2001, did not field its own candidate.
 
However, the UDF and DSB have a recent history of a joint candidate: Martin Zaimov, who ran second to Borissov in the previous mayoral elections.
 
On October 12, Bulgarian National Television reported Dimitrov as saying that the day would see the UDF deciding whether to back Fandukova or to put up its own nominee.
 
The weekend prior to the expected UDF announcement saw the nomination of candidates by two small right-wing parties: Yane Yanev’s Order Lawfulness and Justice party nominated architect Pavel Popov ("we have the ambition to become one of the leading political parties in Sofia," Yanev was quoted by Focus as saying, adding that Popov represented an alternative to all political parties, not just the BSP but also GERB) while the Union of Free Democrats, the party founded by Stefan Sofiyanski when he was mayor of Sofia, nominated Ivan Antikadzhiev, billing him as the ideal choice for right-wing voters "because there was no genuine right-wing candidate" in the race.