BSP withdrew political trust from its municipal councilors in Sofia

The Executive Bureau of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, on February 9, held an extraordinary meeting to discuss the behaviour of the group of BSP municipal councillors in the Sofia City Council.

• The leadership of the BSP categorically distanced itself from the actions of the municipal councillors;
• Withdraws political trust from them;
• They no longer represent the BSP, but only themselves and are personally responsible for their actions in Sofia city Council;
• Appropriate party sanctions will be imposed at the next National Council meeting.

The decision was reached after the councillors failed to implement decision 134, dated 20 January 2024, of the BSP National Council of 20.01.2024, which states:

"The City Council of the BSP to nominate Diana Tonova for the post of Chairperson of the Sofia City Council. The municipal councillors of the "BSP for Bulgaria" in the voting for the election of the chairperson of the Sofia City Council not to support the established majorities in the municipal council and not to vote for any other candidate than the nominated candidate Diana Tonova".

The councillors did not nominate Tonova and voted for the candidate of the “We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria – Save Sofia” coalition.

Sofia city council elected Tsvetomir Petrov as temporary chairperson, in office until end of July

In a position circulated earlier, the BSP-Sofia said that they had supported the election of the Sofia City Council chair yesterday with the clear awareness and deep conviction in the correctness of this decision.

"All the councillors from our group who supported the election of the temporary chairman of the Sofia City Council implemented the decision of our highest party body - the City Council - from Wednesday evening. This is stated by the municipal councilors from the group of the Local Coalition "BSP for Bulgaria".

The BSP-Sofia remind that support for the election of a temporary chairman of the Sofia City Council yesterday was given by the chairman of the BSP - Sofia and the group of socialists in the council, Ivan Takov, his deputy Ivan Peshev, Nikolay Velchev, Ivan Videlov, Stanislav Mladenov, Enyo Savov.

The decision was supported by the representative of the coalition partner "The Left!" Voislav Todorov.

"We work in the Sofia City Council for Sofia and for the members of the public as we promised in the campaign. The decision to make the city council work, which we took yesterday, is incomparably better alternative than throwing Sofia municipality into a complete collapse if we enter into a series of endlessly long legal procedures related to triggering new elections for municipal councillors in Sofia. We commented on all the options for a way out of the situation together with the members of the City Council of the BSP - Sofia and the final decision of Wednesday evening was clear - we are a responsible party that works with reason for the people and for the city. That is why we have received a mandate from our highest party body to support the election of an interim chairman (to hold office until July) and the start of the work of the city council. We have decided categorically that we will not support or be part of a majority with GERB or WCC-DB-SS. All other statements are manipulations and speculations for personal political purposes. Only in a functioning municipal council can it be clearly seen who supports the majority and who is in opposition. Now we have a lot of work to do. And the critics, who are in a rush to judge us, will be unpleasantly surprised by our next actions," the BSP-Sofia position says.