The battle to be mayor of Sofia will beyond doubt be the most colourful in the past 18 years of democracy.
As September 28 nears, the date by which all candidate mayors must register with the Central Election Committee, the list of bidders to be Sofia mayor is almost complete. The most recent nomination is that of MEP Slavi Binev. According to Volen Siderov, leader of ultra-nationalist party Ataka, Binev will be Ataka’s man in the battle for Sofia. Indeed Binev is well known among young Sofians, who have visited his numerous discotheques, bars and erotic clubs through the years. His nomination by Ataka in the spring 2007 MEP elections came as a surprise to most people, but this time was different. Binev is well known as a harsh critic of current Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov. Binev and Borissov know each other from the times when Bulgaria was a communist state and both were students of martial arts. Borissov was the first to enter the race in Sofia a month ago, seeking a second four-year term in office; Binev was soon to follow.
Among political parties of any significance, only two – both of which are members of the national tripartite governing coalition – the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) and Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) have not yet named candidates in Sofia. The major dilemma facing the NMSP is whether to endorse the candidate of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the coalition majority partner. As was the case with the 2006 presidential election, the NMSP is still undecided. The BSP candidate for Sofia is General Brigo Asparouhov, former head of the National Intelligence Service and a former officer in the former communist secret police. While Vladimir Karolev, a member of the NMSP group in Sofia’s municipal council, does not exclude the possibility of supporting Asparouhov, others in the NMSP insist that the party should support either Borissov, who formerly was associated with the NMSP, or the other right-wing nomination, that of former Bulgarian National Bank deputy governor Martin Zaimov, raised by Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB) As for the MRF, the party would most likely support BSP’s Asparouhov, given the MRF’s previous pattern of behaviour in Sofia mayoral elections.
With Borissov, Asparouhov, Binev, Zaimov and Titi Papazov, the list seems complete.
Basketball coach Papazov has been nominated by the Democratic Party. The party tried, without success, to persuade the UDF and DSB to adopt Papazov as a joint candidate. Zaimov, who emerged as the UDF-DSB candidate, is a member of the same Democratic Party. So in a way the Democratic Party is in a contest with itself. Advertised as a right-wing candidate with the mission to unite right-wing parties, Papazov will have to explain to right-wing supporters his presence next to President Georgi Purvanov on Purvanov’s presidential election night win, in October 2006, while the right-wing parties waited their turn to talk to the media.
Among hard-core supporters of the UDF and DSB, Zaimov’s grandfather Vladimir, a collaborator with Soviet intelligence during World War 2 and a member of the pantheon of heroes of Bulgaria’s diehard communists, may be the source of unease. A question may be whether Zaimov’s family benefited during communism because of the Vladimir Zaimov connection.
As for Asparouhov, his profile does not fit in with the BSP’s recent strategy of distancing themselves from the party’s communist past. Which raises the question as to whether Asparouhov’s candidacy was a way for someone in the BSP to strike a blow against the BSP Sofia unit and more precisely its leader, former economy and energy minister Roumen Ovcharov.
