Bulgarian Socialists Elect New Leader Before Polls

Mikov was elected at a party congress on Saturday to replace Sergei Stanishev, who resigned earlier this month after the party’s poor showing in European elections in May and the subsequent collapse of the Socialist-led coalition government of Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski.

Oresharski resigned last Wednesday after Bulgaria’s worst banking crisis in recent years. During his tenure as premier, he was also buffeted by mass protests against alleged corruption.

Mikov was the parliamentary speaker in the outgoing administration and now faces the job of preparing the party for the upcoming pre-term general election on October 5, with recent polls suggesting that it is trailing behind its main centre-right opponent, GERB (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria).

He sounded a cautious note after his election.

“The difficult part begins today,” he told journalists.

Mikov faces several other challenges, including healing rifts within the party which culminated in a number of senior figures leaving early this year to join the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival, an alternative left-wing party headed by Georgi Purvanov, a former Bulgarian president and Socialist leader.

Mikov’s predecessor Stanishev, who has taken up a seat in the European parliament, told journalists that he had stepped down “because I cannot let my mistakes have negative consequences for the party”.

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