Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections scheduled for 2009 should be brought forward to September 2008, said Boiko Borissov, mayor of Sofia and “informal” leader of the Citizens for European Development, the party said by pollsters to be certain of the largest share of votes in the next elections.

At the start of a two-day conference of the party, abbreviated in Bulgarian as GERB, Borissov said that ahead-of-term elections were necessary to stave off the deepening crisis into which the country was being led by the current tripartite ruling coalition.

He said that should GERB fail to gain a majority of votes decisive enough to form a government, the party would remain in opposition, but continuation of a government led by the incumbent coalition would mean a “light or severe accident” for the state.

GERB leader Tsvetan Tsvetanov said that the party would prefer to govern on its own, but did not rule out a coalition with right-wing parties. Tsvetanov said that GERB would not form a coalition with parties from outside the right-wing.

Borissov, who built a national profile as chief secretary of the Interior Ministry during the 2001 to 2005 Simeon Saxe-Coburg government and continued briefly in the post in the first months of the current administration, devoted much of his remarks at the opening of the congress to law and order themes.

Commenting on the case of Angel Bonchev, the president of Litex football club who was found on July 10 2008 after being abducted two months previously, Borissov said that all the resources of the country should be mobilised to catch Bonchev’s abductors.

Borissov hit out at the prolonged and much-interrupted trial of Volen Siderov, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Ataka party, on charges of lying to prosecutors about a road traffic incident. Ataka supporters who turned out in force at the court have forced postponements of the trial more than once, and Borissov described the saga as “a farce”.

He described the Interior Ministry as non-functioning and hamstrung by current attempts to reform it.

Borissov said that if Sofia’s troubled steel mill Kremikovtzi was declared bankrupt so that it could be sold cheaply, it would be the biggest plunder of this century.

According to a report in Bulgarian daily Standart on July 13, Tsvetanov said GERB was starting a casting process for future ministers. Candidates would pass through “Spartan” training given by party “experts” and members of the European Parliament.

The newspaper said that GERB wanted to recruit capable people from throughout Bulgaria, who would be taught how to handle European Union funds and to keep in touch with the citizenry.