Bulgarian Socialist Party expels former leader Ninova

Sofia: The national council of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) voted by an overwhelming majority at a meeting on September 1 to expel former BSP leader Kornelia Ninova from the party.

Seven reasons were cited for expelling Ninova, among them failing to implement several decisions by party leadership bodies, damaging the prestige of the BSP with false statements in public and sabotaging the election registration of the BSP.

Ninova resigned as leader of the BSP after the party’s latest poor performance, in the June 2024 early parliamentary elections.

In 2017, in the first parliamentary elections after Ninova became BSP leader in 2016, the party got 27.19 per cent of the vote and 80 seats in the National Assembly. In June 2024, it got 7.06 per cent and 19 MPs. All of Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections since Ninova saw the BSP producing ever-worse results – though the trend already had been established by leaders before her – but until 2024, Ninova always had succeeded in clinging to the leader’s chair.

In spite of this year’s resignation, Ninova has clung to power over party affairs, first by withdrawing power of attorney from the party’s legal counsel so that Ninova had sole signing power, then recently handing power of attorney to two of her close allies, Georgi Svilenski and Ivan Chenchev.

This caused significant upset among the party’s acting leadership because it left Ninova in control of decisions about and registration of candidates for Bulgaria’s latest early parliamentary elections, to be held on October 27.

The September 1 meeting was preceded by a protest outside the BSP’s heaquarters by about three dozen Ninova loyalists, who torn down earlier stickers posted by the BSP Youth calling for her expulsion. A large contingent of police guarded the party headquarters as tensions rose.

At the national council meeting, a decision was approved calling on Ninova to hand power of attorney to acting party leader Atanas Zafirov.

Ninova refused to comply with this.

This was followed by a vote to expel Ninova from the BSP, approved with 105 votes in favour, 16 against and four abstentions.

The executive council also voted to expel Svilenski, Chenchev and another Ninova loyalist, Krum Donchev, from the BSP. These votes were approved with similarly large majorities.

Earlier in the day’s proceedings, Ninova called for a special party congress on September 28 to deal with the matter of her resignation. This proposal was overwhelmingly rejected.

Please help keep The Sofia Globe’s independent journalism alive by clicking on the ‘become a member’ button below and signing up to become a supporter on patreon.com. Becoming a patron of The Sofia Globe costs as little as three euro a month or the equivalent in other currencies.