Bulgaria Names over 400 Mayor Hopefuls as Collaborators
Politics | October 25, 2007, Thursday
Former intelligence chief Brigo Asparuhov expectedly figures on the list of candidates for mayors, who once collaborated with the secret services. Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)
A special panel investigating Bulgaria's communist-era police files announced that more than 430 candidates for mayors once collaborated with the secret services.
The biggest part of the candidates figuring on the black list have been nominated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (76), the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a junior partner in the governing coalition who represents Bulgaria's sizable Turkish minority (54), GERB, the party of populist Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov (38) and nationalist Ataka party (27).
Former intelligence chief Brigo Asparuhov, who was on the blacklist of MPs with murky past, expectedly figures on the latest blacklist of alleged secret services collaborators.
The findings come just three days before Bulgarians head to vote in local elections and shortly after two members of the central electoral body were exposed as one-time secret service collaborators.
One of the panel's first acts came at the end of July and exposed Parvanov, 50, a communist historian who has been president since 2002 and was re-elected last year, as a collaborator. Meanwhile six out of 218 runners in Bulgaria's first MEP elections were revealed to have murky past, along with three former constitutional judges and fifteen supreme magistrates and investigators.
At the beginning of September the special panel released the names of 138 agents and collaborators to the secret services, who have been members of Bulgaria's parliaments since the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Also on the list were the names of president Georgi Parvanov and 19 current members of parliament.
The files of the former Committee for State Security are a thorny issue in Bulgaria, especially when it comes to the past of high-ranking officials.
Bulgaria's communist-era security service is believed to have remained potent after the fall of communism with the ex-operatives closely linked to the political and business establishment.
The biggest part of the candidates figuring on the black list have been nominated by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (76), the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a junior partner in the governing coalition who represents Bulgaria's sizable Turkish minority (54), GERB, the party of populist Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov (38) and nationalist Ataka party (27).
Former intelligence chief Brigo Asparuhov, who was on the blacklist of MPs with murky past, expectedly figures on the latest blacklist of alleged secret services collaborators.
The findings come just three days before Bulgarians head to vote in local elections and shortly after two members of the central electoral body were exposed as one-time secret service collaborators.
One of the panel's first acts came at the end of July and exposed Parvanov, 50, a communist historian who has been president since 2002 and was re-elected last year, as a collaborator. Meanwhile six out of 218 runners in Bulgaria's first MEP elections were revealed to have murky past, along with three former constitutional judges and fifteen supreme magistrates and investigators.
At the beginning of September the special panel released the names of 138 agents and collaborators to the secret services, who have been members of Bulgaria's parliaments since the collapse of the communist regime in 1989. Also on the list were the names of president Georgi Parvanov and 19 current members of parliament.
The files of the former Committee for State Security are a thorny issue in Bulgaria, especially when it comes to the past of high-ranking officials.
Bulgaria's communist-era security service is believed to have remained potent after the fall of communism with the ex-operatives closely linked to the political and business establishment.
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