Sofia: Bulgaria's ruling conservative party of Prime Minister Boyko Borisov secured a win in local elections Sunday, exit polls showed, strengthening its power one year after winning the national vote.
Borisov's Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) party won mayoral seats in at least 16 out of Bulgaria's 27 major cities in the October 25 and November 1 polls, including the capital Sofia and the second biggest city of Plovdiv, according to early exit poll results by several institutes.
GERB won 14 of the major cities in the last local election in 2011.
Borisov leads an uneasy four-party coalition cabinet after failing to secure a majority in general elections in 2014, but analysts said that the local vote results now showed there was little alternative to GERB.
Sofia's major Yordanka Fandakova was easily re-elected in the first round ballot on October 25 when GERB won outright victories in another 10 major cities.
Their ruling coalition partner, the right-wing Reformist Bloc, won one city outright and another went to the Turkish minority Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) party after official first-round results.
GERB also won 31.5 percent of the municipal council votes to the Socialists' 13.1 percent. The MRF came out third with 11.5 percent.
Analysts said the win was partly down to Borisov's firm stance on the migrant crisis, which helped Bulgaria stay on the sidelines of the major refugee flow across the Balkans.
"GERB definitively secured power after these elections," political analyst Kancho Stoychev said.
AFP
