site.btaGERB's Candidate Ivan Totev Wins Narrow Victory in Plovdiv Mayoral Elections

GERB's Candidate Ivan Totev Wins Narrow Victory in Plovdiv Mayoral Elections

Sofia, November 2 (BTA) - Ivan Totev, nominated by the ruling
GERB party, won a narrow victory in the mayoral elections in
Bulgaria's second largest city of Plovdiv after Sunday's second
round of voting in the nationwide local elections. Totev
garnered 50.73 per cent of the vote and his opponent Slavcho
Atanassov (Patriotic Front) got 49.27 per cent, the Central
Election Commission (CEC) reported after 100 per cent of the
votes were counted.

In the capital Sofia, GERB won the most mayoral seats in the
city boroughs, followed by the Reformist Bloc, while BSP-Left
Bulgaria did not win a single seat, according to the results
from 100 per cent of the tally sheets. The results have been
processed by the Municipal Election Commission and published on
the CEC website.

Nationwide, the Reformist Bloc managed to win back Pleven, kept
Montana, and surprisingly prevailed in Dobrich, but lost some
old strongholds like Svishtov, Petrich and Haskovo. In Dobrich,
Yordan Yordanov (Reformist Bloc) earned 50.61 per cent of the
vote in the second round, defeating Detelina Nikolova (GERB),
whose score of 49.39 per cent was not enough for her to secure a
 fourth mayoral term.

BSP-Left Bulgaria Deputy Floor Leader Atanas Merdjanov admitted
in a bTV interview that the Bulgarian Socialist Party suffered
yet another defeat. His coalition won the mayoral posts in 60 of
 Bulgaria's 265 municipalities, but not a single one in a
regional capital.

"This is one more loss on our way. This is our crushing defeat
in these elections. But we won 60 Bulgarian municipalities, so
we are the 'number two' party," Merdjanov noted.

CEC data shows that, according to the number of signatures,
1,319,000 people voted for municipality mayors, 447,000 for
mayoralty mayors and 227,000 for borough mayors.

* * *

The District Prosecution Office in Etropole, Sofia Region,
instituted summary proceedings against a 31-year-old woman who
is suspected of offering and giving 300 leva to another local in
 order to persuade her to vote for a particular mayoral
candidate.