site.btaRunner-up in 2023 Sofia Mayoral Elections to Stand for Parliament in Left Coalition

The runner-up in the Sofia mayoral elections in 2023, Vanya Grigorova, will be running for the national parliament together with the Bulgarian Solidarity coalition. On Tuesday, they submitted to the Central Election Commission the required signatures backing their participation in the elections.

In the local elections, Grigorovs was nominated by the Sofia chapter of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) but she made no secret of the differences she had with BSP leader Korneliya Ninova.

Grigorova told reporters that the decisive factor for her decision to run in the general elections was “the huge citizens’ energy during the local elections”. “Quite a few people supported me then which gave me assurance that our messages from those elections were heard,” she added. She spoke of “a need to end the mandate of this sham elite which has been running the country for long years”. 

Asked about the mushrooming of Left political formations, Grigorova said that this does not weaken it. “What weakens it are the battles in one of the parties, which is a key party, the persecution of ‘the enemy within the party’,” she said adding that the Sofia chapter of BSP is one example. “We cannot leave Left voters and the working people to the sham elites,” Grigorova said.

The leadership of the Sofia chapter were made to quit over differences with the party’s central leadership and a new one was elected.

Grigorova was also asked to comment Korneliya Ninova’s accusations that she had lied. She said, “I don’t want to be her opponent and she is not my opponent. If we have the same goals, we should be working in the same direction. She may be used to fighting like-minded people in the party, to ostracizing members and expelling them, but it is not my approach.”