Bulgaria Right-Wing Leader: War is Waged against Us

The new leadership of the biggest right-wing party in Bulgaria, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), has been refused court registration. The news was broken by the recently elected UDF leader Martin Dimitrov, who slammed Sofia City Court decision as "a war being waged against the party".

The court based its ruling on what Dimitrov described as "politically-motivated arguments", including UDF tradition of holding a secret vote for taking important decisions or electing leadership. According to the court "the secret vote is not a democratic practice".

"Numerous attempts are being made to prevent the building of a united right-wing front in Bulgaria," Dimitrov told the morning broadcast of Nova TV channel. He pointed out the parliamentary drive for a higher threshold for electing MPs on the ballots of coalitions as an attempt to shatter the right-wing.

UDF will appeal the court decision.

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 new leader Martin Dimitrov spearheaded efforts towards a much needed unity of the right wing by giving the green light to a broad pre-election coalition. He was the first to pool forces with the die-hard right-wing party of former Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, turning his back to a history of bad blood between the two parties' leaders.

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