Pro-EU parties beat pro-Russian coalition in Sofia’s mayoral elections

10 months ago 38

The mayoral election in Sofia, called the third most important post in the country, was won by IT Entrepreneur Vasil Terziev, from the pro-European coalition between We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria and Save Sofia, beating former trade unionist Vanya Grigorova, who was nominated by a coalition of pro-Russian left and far-right parties.

There was only a 4,500 vote difference between both candidates in Sofia, a city with 1.3 million inhabitants. Grigorova’s team announced that it would challenge the legality of the elections before the court.

“The elections are not over for us. We continue to do a parallel vote-by-vote count,” Zhelio Boychev (Bulgarian Socialist Party) said. He is part of the Initiative Committee that nominated Grigorova.

The results show a 48.2% lead for the pro-EU candidate Vasil Terziev and 46.9% for Grigorova, nominated by the socialist party and other leftist and pro-Putin formations.

A total of 174,321 people voted for Terziev, and 169,785 for Grigorova, equating to a turnout of around 35%.

Three days before the elections, the debate focused on Grigorova’s reluctance to answer questions about the country’s geopolitical orientation, although she made no secret of her intentions to enter national politics. “I don’t know if Crimea is Russian or not Russian. What we are seeing is a war that has been going on for two years”.

When asked by journalists “Is Putin an aggressor?”, she answered: “Could I not answer for Putin?”.

In 2022, Vanya Grigorova was part of a Podkrepa union organisation, which is the second largest in the country. Then she was one of the most vocal opponents of the severing of Bulgaria’s ties with Gazprom until in April 2022 the gas was stopped by the Kremlin’s unilateral decision.

Grigorova gained early experience in her career at George Soros’ Open Society organisation, where she worked on Roma integration programs. Now she is backed by pro-Kremlin and far-right parties such as Ataka, which maintain strong anti-Roma rhetoric.

On Monday, Vanya Grigorova’s team announced that it would work for the consolidation of the left-wing parties, mainly considering the left-wing pro-Russian political factors in the country. On this political front, the inclusion of the current president Rumen Radev, who is one of the sharpest critics of the provision of military aid to Ukraine by the pro-EU government in Sofia, is expected.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)