It was not in the interest of Plovdiv to again accept baled refuse from Sofia, Plovdiv mayor Slavcho Atanasov told private broadcaster bTV.

“The refuse dump in Tsalpatitsa remains with a capacity for 400 000 tons and if it would accept the Sofia refuse it would have a life-span of another five to six months,” Atanasov said.

Moreover, Plovdiv had only received a small part of the money promised for storing Sofia's refuse in 2007.

The conflict between Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) and Bulgarian party Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO) in Plovdiv city hall had nothing to do with refuse crisis, Atanasov said.

“DSB [Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria] is becoming a hostage of [Sofia mayor and GERB informal leader] Boiko Borissov, social anthropologist Haralan Alexandrov told bTV.

“The right-wing parties are seriously incompatible in their present form," he said.

DSB leader Ivan Kostov had traded on the ideas and trust of the electors.

DSB member of Parliament Nikolai Mihailov told bTV that “DSB could not enter into a coalition with GERB’s informal leader [Borissov].

Borissov was “politically corrupt,” Mihailov said.

“A discrimination of the previous elite was needed,” according to Mihailov.

Former executive director of municipal company Sofiiski Imoti Toshko Dobrev, who was arrested in end-August on charges of completion of unprofitable deals, told private broadcaster Nova Television that the problem was not in the way the deals were completed, but in the property evaluation made at the time the deals were made.

“There is no violation of the law and the municipality was not defrauded,” Dobrev said.