Profile: Georgi Parvanov

Trying to accumulate votes outside the traditional ex-communist voters, nine years ago he presented himself as a social president and won the elections with the slogan: “I’m on your side”. He’s the only head of state who has managed to be re-elected in a direct vote since the fall of communism.

In 1981 Parvanov joined the Bulgarian Communist party which, after the democratic changes, was renamed the Bulgarian Socialist party (BSP). From 1996 to 2001 he was BSP chairman.

Parvanov headed the party at a time of severe political crisis, as the then-socialist government was ousted in 1997 after a month of growing social pressure and protests. Instead of forming a new government, Parvanov and Nikolay Dobrev, the BSP’s prime minister-to-be, decided to return the mandate and call for early elections. Although this decision was unpopular among party members, it earned Parvanov a good reputation and a promising career in politics.

Under his management BSP has tried to break with its communist past and to evolve slowly into a modern, mainstream socialist party. Parvanov is often praised for his attempt to find the right balance between reforming the party without alienating its core of elderly, ex-communist supporters.

While in the mid-90’s both the party and its leaders strongly opposed Bulgaria’s membership in NATO and the EU, Parvanov later promised to work to achieve these strategic goals, adapting to the changing views of the voters. During the war in Kosovo for example, Parvanov and his party voted against a resolution allowing NATO access to Bulgaria's airspace. In the years after, however, he strongly supported Sofia’s bid to join both the EU and NATO.

Although the role of the president in Bulgaria is mainly symbolic as executive power is invested mainly in the hands of the prime minister, Parvanov has played an active role in the country’s political life, aiming to generate some additional political gains.

In 2006 it became publicly known that Parvanov had collaborated with the Communist-era secret services. Just before the presidential elections and amid public pressure, Parvanov was forced to admit his involvement with the notorious services. He said that he had a secret service file, but denied being an informer. This announcement did not cause much trouble for Parvanov, who won nearly 76 per cent of the votes in the run-off elections against the nationalist Volen Siderov.

A year later, the commission in charge of declassifying confidential files from that period revealed that Parvanov had indeed cooperated with the secret services. He was recruited in October 1989, just a month before the communist regime collapsed. His codename, agent Gotse, has become a popular nickname for him. Although opposition leaders urged him to resign from the post because of his past as a secret service agent, he refused to step down.

Although Parvanov has called himself a “people’s president” and embraced the country’s Euro-Atlantic integration, he is often criticised for his pro-Russian orientation. For example, he is a strong supporter of major Kremlin-backed energy projects - a new nuclear plant in Belene, the South Stream gas corridor and the Burgas-Alexandroupolis oil pipeline, that would make Sofia even more dependent on Moscow’s energy.

There have been widespread speculations that, after the end of his second term, Parvanov would form his own political party.

Since the government of centre-right Boyko Borisov took over a year ago, cabinet-president relations have deteriorated. The last row prompted the ruling party of GERB to initiate a procedure for the impeachment of the president.

The widely-publicised scandal erupted after Parvanov published a transcript of his conversation with the finance minister Simeon Dyankov, without notifying the minister it was being recorded. However, GERB did not succeed in pushing the procedure to the Constitutional court, as it failed to get enough support in the parliament.