Bulgaria's ruling party ready with its 2011 presidential candidate
One of Bulgaria's two Deputy Prime Ministers, Finance Minister Simeon Dyankov or Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov, will be ruling party GERB's candidate for the 2011 elections for President, said Prime Minister and GERB leader Boiko Borissov on April 30 2010.Borissov said that GERB's presidential candidate will be one of the Cabinet's Deputy Prime Ministers, Bulgarian media said. Borissov did not specify who the candidate would be. He only said that he would not run for president, quashing speculation that he might be a candidate.Borissov's statement comes a day after President Georgi Parvanov, whose second consecutive term in office ends in 2011, said that he could face Borissov at an election "sooner or later".Parvanov was replying to Borissov's words of the day before in which the Prime Minister said that he (Borissov) and Parvanov should face each other at elections immediately.This was Borissov's response to Parvanov's criticism of the actions of both the Government and GERB's majority in Parliament."For me it is clear that Purvanov is engineering his own political project which has to do with the Government stepping down and Parvanov coming to power," Borissov was quoted by reporters as saying on April 30 2010. Speculation about Parvanov launching his own political project after 2011 has been ongoing for more than a year given that he cannot run for a third term in office.So far Parvanov has refused to give a clear answer on his post-2011 plans but a number of members of his party, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (which he led before becoming President in 2001), have speculated that he is the right person to unite the Left in Bulgaria after BSP's defeat at the 2009 elections for Parliament. Over the past six months, Parvanov and Borissov, often portrayed in opinion polls as Bulgaria's most popular and influential politicians, have been embroiled in a number of public disputes.The latest clash took place a week ago when Parvanov vetoed two of GERB'S controversial amendments to the Penal Procedure Code.Parvanov has also vetoed the newly-adopted Law on Academic Staff Development. On April 23 2010, Parvanov (who appoints and dismisses the higher command of the armed forces on the recommendations of the Cabinet) and Defence Minister Anyo Angelov disagreed on the recent promotions of a number of high-ranking military officers.The highest point of tension between Parvanov and GERB was in March when GERB's attempt to impeach Parvanov over a scandal with Dyankov failed.