Bulgarian Socialists grow as Romanian colleagues lose ground

The governing Socialists in Bulgaria came out as winners of the European elections organized in Bulgaria on Sunday, one day after Romania’s main left-wing party, the Social Democratic Party (PSD), lost considerable ground with a crushing defeat in their move to suspend the President in a referendum.

A Gallup poll quoted by Novinite.com shows the PM Sergei Stanishev’s Socialists and the GERB party each received some 23% of the vote in the country’s first elections for the European Parliament.

The vote placed the Turkish minority party third with 18.5% of the vote, followed by the Simeon II National Movement and the radical party Ataka.

The news came as the main left-wing party in Romania, Social Democrats, failed to mobilize voters in their struggle to remove arch-rival, President Traian Basescu from office in a referendum on Saturday. Basescu’s return to presidency with the support of about 75% of the population is seen as a crushing defeat for both the PSD and the governing Liberals, who have pushed for the referendum.

The referendum came at the peak of a major political crisis in Romania which prompted prime minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu to postpone the country’s first European elections, originally programmed for May 20, until later this year.