At a Sofia City Council (SCC) briefing, municipal officials who recently left the We Continue the Change (PP) party declared they would not be complicit in covering up the truth.

The mayors of the capital’s Lyulin and Mladost districts, Georgi Todorov and Ivaylo Kukurin, along with councillors Dragomir Ivanov and Dimitar Shalafov, categorically refused to be 'part of schemes and backroom deals'.

Todorov said that they had recently been subjected to public vilification, insinuations and pressure for refusing to remain silent. The arrest of PP's Nikola Barbutov, his subsequent resignation, and the resignation of Kiril Petkov cannot simply be dismissed as just another internal political shake-up, said the mayor of Lyulin.

(Nikola Barbutov, Sofia’s Deputy Mayor for European Policies, International Activities, and Tourism, was arrested on June 24 on charges of participating in an organised criminal group and offering a bribe. He resigned the following day, on June 25, prior to being formally dismissed by the Mayor of Sofia - ed.)

According to Todorov, these resignations 'are a sign of moral collapse, which is the result of long-standing cover-ups of minor secrets'. He emphasised that, in recent months, they had been pressured to prioritise private interests over the public good and to betray their principles.