Less than month and a half remains until the local elections on October 25. A total of 81 parties and three coalitions have requested registration for the elections. This is more than the number of parties in the previous elections in 2011 when 73 parties and one coalition took part. Simultaneously with the local elections a national referendum on the electoral system will be held but it seems that for some parties the referendum is of secondary importance, as days before the deadline for submitting applications for participation just 12 parties had done so.
The different interest towards participation in local elections and participation in the referendum is worthy of a separate commentary. Bulgaria's Central Election Commission has so far decided to open 307 polling stations in 47 countries as most applications for opening section came from the US - 107. Fears of the Foreign Ministry related to possible low interest for participation and difficulties in finding members of the sectional electoral commissions have not been confirmed yet, or disclaimed.
Two days before the deadline expires, the Reformist Bloc applied for registration as a unified force. This put an end to speculations for insurmountable internal contradictions in the rightist coalition and confirmed expectations for better performance of right-wing formations this time in comparison to the situation in 2011
Expectations for sharp differences and disunion in leftist parties have been confirmed. It turned out that the Bulgarian Socialist Party had two runners for Sofia Mayor, after MP Georgi Kadiev announced that he was a contender for the post, along with the official candidate of the party Mihail Mirchev. Disunion in Sofia is symptomatic and the exclusion of Kadiev from the socialist parliamentary group would hardly prevent similar events taking place elsewhere in the country. Forecasts for outflow of previous Socialist mayors in the direction of the ABV party, created by former President and socialist leader Georgi Parvanov, were also confirmed. BSP themselves admit that the party is not in a good shape and will fight to preserve its current share of the votes.
It became clear that in the period after the past local election the number of voters in some villages has fallen below the required minimum for opening a polling station. There are villages with only one voter in them, while in some urban areas the maximum number of voters for a polling station – 1000, has been exceeded. For the month and a half that remains to the elections a number of curious things would happen and perhaps the current local elections would be quite different than those in 2011.English version: Alexander Markov
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