SOFIA -- Vassil Terziev, the candidate of the reformist pro-Western coalition We Continue the Change/Democratic Bulgaria has won a crucial runoff mayoral race in the capital, Sofia, almost-complete results showed early on November 6.
After 99.78 percent of the vote was counted, Terziev received 48.17 percent of the vote while Vanya Grigorova, the candidate of a pro-Russia coalition led by the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the left-wing Levitsa party, obtained 46.92 percent of the vote.
Neither Terziev nor Grigorova managed to get past the 50 percent threshold in last week's first round.
The candidate of former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov's center-right GERB party failed to reach the second round, thus ending the center-right party’s 18-year hold on Sofia’s mayoral office.
Borisov had called on GERB supporters to vote for Terziev.
Terziev is due to hold a news conference on November 6 after final results will be announced.
GERB and We Continue the Change/Democratic Bulgaria -- also known as PP-DB -- are both participating in a coalition backing the government of Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov.
PP-DB is a new anti-corruption coalition that failed to win the latest national elections on April 2.
GERB, which had been ruling Bulgaria since 2009, won the national elections, but it failed to pick up enough support to form a government alone, leading to the coalition with the opposition PP-DB.
Terziev is an IT entrepreneur, while Grigorova is a trade-union activist nominated by leftist and pro-Russia parties.
On November 6, PP-DB candidate Blagomir Kotsev defeated his GERB opponent Ivan Portnih to secure the mayorship of the Black Sea Port of Varna, Bulgaria's third-largest city.
On June 6, Bulgaria's parliament approved a coalition government led by Denkov, giving the EU and NATO member a new government after five elections within two years.
The government received the backing of the parliament's two biggest political groups -- the center-right GERB and PP-DB.
According to the agreement, Denkov, from the PP-DB, will be premier for the first nine months and then the position will be taken over by Maria Gabriel from GERB, who until then will be deputy prime minister and foreign minister.
Bulgaria had been governed mainly by caretaker governments appointed by President Rumen Radev since public anger over years of corruption boiled over into massive protests in 2020. In February, Radev dissolved parliament and announced the April 2 vote.