Outgoing UDF Leader Says Will Stay Party Member

Politics | July 15, 2007, Sunday // 00:00
Bulgaria: Outgoing UDF Leader Says Will Stay Party Member Former Bulgarian president Stoyanov steps down as leader with only several months left before local polls in the country. Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)

Former Bulgarian president Petar Stoyanov said on Sunday he had no plans to quit his party membership despite stepping down as leader of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).

Speaking in front of more than 600 delegates at the party's convention in Sofia, he rubbished the media speculation that he would leave UDF to set up a new party.

Stoyanov resigned as party leader after UDF, once the dominant centre-right party in the country, failed to win a single seat in the European Parliament elections in May.

"I will not run again for party leader, whatever the media claims, nor will I speak out against the new leadership - whatever I have to tell them, I will do so in private," he told party delegates.

The new party leader will have a difficult job and will need to step up fundraising efforts, said Stoyanov, blaming the lack of money for the party's recent failures at the polls.

Hundreds of delegates will have to pick between MP Yordan Bakalov, Sofia councillor Stefan Ivanov, businessman Plamen Yurukov and Drago Mihalev, who is a founding member of the party.

UDF has been in a steady decline since 2001, when the party lost the general elections following four years of needed, but painful reforms.

It never recovered from the shock, splitting into three smaller parties since then, progressively losing ground in public opinion polls, which show it could fail to make it into the next parliament altogether.

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