Bulgaria Right Wing Paves the Way to Unity

Months ahead of the general election vote in Bulgaria, the two biggest right-wing parties made a major step towards a much needed unity by giving the green light to a broad pre-election coalition.

The National Council of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) voted yes to the establishment of a pre-election coalition with the right hard-liners from the party of former Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB). The members of the council voted 64 to 41 for the proposal, which enjoyed the full support of the recently elected leader of the party Martin Dimitrov.

In a separate development, DSB leadership cleared the way for party head Ivan Kostov to sign a pre-election agreement with UDF.

Given the history of bad blood between the parties' leaders, Tuesday decision represents a major step towards pooling forces together and salvaging their only chance for a decent performance at the general and MEP elections in the summer.

The performance of all rightist parties in Bulgaria at elections has been going from bad to worse since 2001.

The Union of Democratic Forces, an emblematic party, which stood for change during the country's post-communist transition in 1990s, has seen its influence increasingly fade over the last few years.

The UDF presently has no members of the European Parliament as it failed to pass the 5% threshold in Bulgaria's EP elections in the spring of 2007 (it received 4,74% of the votes). After this election failure, the UDF was led by the businessman Plamen Yurukov, who recently decided to give up the position of party chair.

The Democrats for Strong Bulgaria also suffered a crushing defeat at the MEP elections in May 2007, as a result of which Ivan Kostov resigned, only to be reelected two months later.

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