According to the first exit polls of
the local government runoffs held today in Bulgaria, in the
capital Sofia, millionaire Vassil Terziev, the son of a
high-ranking member of the Ds, the Bulgarian KGB at the time of
Todor Zhivkov's communist regime, backed by the ruling liberal
party 'Let's Continue the Change' (Pp), is reported to have won
the race by garnering 50.8 percent of the vote. His rival, trade
unionist Vania Grigorova, backed by the opposition-aligned
Bulgarian Socialist Party (Bsp), would go with 45.2 percent of
the vote. The exit polls are from the Gallup International
agency. Analysts believe that the difference recorded between
the two by the exit polls is not categorical and one must wait
for the results of the parallel vote count. According again to
the first exit polls, in the city of Plovdiv, one of the
strongholds of the conservative Gerb party and the second
largest center in Bulgaria, Gerb candidate Kostadin Dimitrov
would garner 52.8 percent of the vote against 41.5 percent that
went to Ivailo Staribratov, candidate of the Pp. The Gerb would,
however, lose the city of Varna, the largest port on the Black
Sea, where the Pp is confirmed with 49.4 percent obtained by its
candidate Blagomir Kotsev, beating Gerb's current mayor Ivan
Portnik to whom 40.9 percent would go.
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