Vassil Terziev’s bid to become the new mayor of the capital will challenge GERB’s traditional dominance of the municipalities – and its uneasy partnership in government with Terziev’s backers.
Tech entrepreneur Vassil Terziev will run for the post of Sofia mayor in elections due this autumn against GERB’s as yet unannounced candidate, on the promise of green politics, political transparency and improved infrastructure.
“It’s all about responsibility: successful people should circle back and contribute to the society they come from,” Terziev said on Wednesday on Nova TV during his first media appearance as a candidate. His nomination was announced on Tuesday.
Terziev has been nominated by “We Continue the Change” and Democratic Bulgaria, by the Save Sofia organisation, which recently registered as a party and by a citizens’ initiative of architects and ecological activists called Sofia’s Team.
This means that one segment of the current ruling coalition, “We Continue the Change” and Democratic Bulgaria, will be challenging their government partner GERB’s influence in the municipalities, while still trying to build a stable government with GERB.
Terziev was born in 1978. He has not been involved in politics before and in public is mostly known as the cofounder of Bulgaria’s highly profitable tech company, Telerik.
US company Progress Software bought Telerrik for $262.5 million US in 2014, making it one of the most successful deals in Bulgaria’s tech history, while Terziev adopted the position of Chief Innovation Officer.
Over the next few years, Terziev and the other Telerik founders started an academy and founded the startup incubator Campus X. Terziev also became a managing partner at Eleven Ventures, an early stage venture capital fund focused on Southeastern European startups.
The strength of the desire for change will determine his chances of taking over the capital.
Current Sofia mayor Yordanka Fandakova from GERB has been in office since 2009 and is at the end of her third consecutive mandate.
She has been increasingly criticised by opposition voices, NGOs and citizen organisations for the low quality of city infrastructure, air pollution in winter, increased construction in neighbourhoods, and is hampered by GERB’s legacy of corruption allegations.
In November last year, ex-PM and GERB leader Boyko Borissov stated that their next mayoral candidate would not be Fandakova – all part of the party’s mission to repair its tarnished image.
As part of the same strategy Borissov has promoted Mariya Gabriel as Bulgaria’s new PM and ended support for controversial Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev whose removal was long demanded by the opposition.
These moves have brought success, as GERB is again in power in an uneasy joint government with its former opponents “We Continue the Change” and Democratic Bulgaria, which ended Bulgaria’s two-year election cycle.
The parties mapped out an experimental format which would see WCC member Nickolay Denkov as Bulgaria’s PM for the first nine months and GERB’s Mariya Gabriela for the next nine.
If Terziev channels the thirst for change in Sofia, he will become city mayor as the government is gradually transferred to Gabriel as Prime Minister, likely an opponent.
The mayoral elections will test whether Borissov’s dominance of local government remains intact: GERB’s presence is especially strong in municipalities, which in turn has given life to numerous allegations of corruption and extortion.
GERB’s Sofia candidate is widely expected to be Georgi Georgiev, born in 1986 and since 2021 the chairman of the Sofia Municipal Council.
