The elections of members of the Bulgarian Socialist Party's (BSP) Supreme Council created a squabble among Bulgarian socialists during the party's 47th Congress held over the weekend at the National Palace of Culture in Sofia.

During the first election tour, the delegates almost unanimously reelected the Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev as the party's Chair.

According to the party's code, the Supreme Council must include 62 delegated members and 119 directly elected ones.

During the first tour only 72 out of the nominated 119 were able to reach the simple majority threshold. The way to elect the remaining 92 created a squabble in the auditorium.

Sergey Stanishev, supported by the Culture Minister Stephan Danailov, proposed to conduct a second tour.

The socialists did however, reject twice the proposal of their newly reelected party leader. Several delegates voiced from their seats the opinion that the Supreme Council members needed to be elected on the base of the majority of votes, which was at the end adopted as the way to conduct the elections.

"We know the reason for such results - it is the voting system, which allows voters to fiddle with the lists; violations cannot be avoided, regardless of how many times we vote," Tatyana Doncheva objected to her leader's proposal.

Some other high ranking party members expressed indignation of the fact that the Congress was contradicting the reelected party Chair Sergey Stanishev.

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