"With these results, we'd better close down the party," election staff of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) was joking at the end of the municipal election day on October 28.

BSP deputies asked one another regularly where and which how much the party had lost, Dnevnik daily said.

Later that even, with collective efforts, election team and leaders of the party calculated, based on exit polls, how to explain that the party was the first political force, Dnevnik said.

Because the results came in late, BSP's press conference was delayed.

In conversations in the National Palace of Culture, where the press conferences were held, accusations were addressed at Brigo Asparouhov, that he was not enough concerned with the opinions oflocal party section.

After the press conference, in which Stanishev explained how BSP were the winners, the socialists, who started the evening with cake, sandwiches and soft drinks, ended it with beer and whiskey.

The one person not taking part in all this was Brigo Asparouhov, who spend most of the evening in his office and hardly spoke with anyone, Dnevnik said.