The decision to leave the BSP was announced by members of three main organizations of the Veliko Tarnovo municipal council of the party, stated in a message to the media.
The text was signed by Donka Lazarova, Petko Tyufekchiev and Petar Antonov, chairmen of the main party organizations “Iskra 1“, “Vira“ and “Republic”. Thus, with the departure of the 92 members, the three organizations cease to exist, said Petko Tyufekchiev, who has been a member of the party since 1995 and is an active municipal councilor from the BSP group in Veliko Tarnovo. He clarified that upon leaving the party, he will submit an application to remain an independent municipal councilor.
According to the announcement, the average age of those who left is 46 years. The main motive is the non-acceptance of the processes in the BSP in recent months. According to the applicants of the application, which will be filed today in the Municipal Party Council, these are processes in which members who worked for decades against the controlled state, defending the BSP cause, were expelled from the party. “The first is that in the recent history of the party, we are witnessing the exclusion of an acting chairman who resigned – personifying the fight against political and oligarchic dependencies”, Tyufekchiev pointed out.
Another motive is, according to them, non-observance of the party statute at the 21st reporting-election conference of the Municipal Organization of the BSP, where Mihail Mihalev was re-elected as chairman for a new 4-year term. According to those who left the party, at the conference held, for the first time in the history of the municipal organization, the report of the Municipal Control Commission with a financial report for the expired mandate, during which there were six parliamentary and one local elections, was not included in the agenda.
„We were deprived of the right to representation in the conference, the right to be proposed and elected in the municipal and national bodies,” said Tyufekchiev. The feeling of the upcoming congress of the BSP with pre-arranged delegates protecting the interests of a few people and not representing socialists in places has strengthened, he added.
In a comment for BTA, the municipal chairman of the BSP, Mihail Mihalev, pointed out that according to the registers in the BSP, the number of members who left the three organizations was 25, not 92. According to him, their departure will not affect party life, since they have not been actively participating in the meetings of the municipal party organization for a long time, and he called on Petko Tyufekchiev, leaving the BSP group in the Municipal Council, to completely stop his advisory activities. He pointed out that the report of the Municipal Control Commission was not accepted because it was not provided, and the present 108 out of 164 delegates accepted a completely new composition of the party bodies by secret ballot.