site.btaGERB Leader Borissov Rules Out Voting for Iotova at Presidential Election

GERB leader Boyko Borissov said on Sunday he would not vote for President Iliana Iotova, describing her as his ideological opponent.

Borissov was addressing young GERB members at a New Minds national academy event in Pazardzhik. He said he would not vote for many other candidates either and had founded GERB to defeat the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). No one had yet approached GERB for support in the presidential race, he added.

"History is a good thing, and we should remember it. Five years ago, GERB nominated a presidential candidate. Back then, our friends from Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) supported Iotova. We already have a precedent in Bulgaria: then president Rumen Radev decided to do something else and the vice president took over his role," Borissov said. "We must be very careful about presidential tickets. I was taught that if I cannot help someone, I should not stand in their way. You should not offer unsolicited help, because it always backfires on you," he added.

Borissov also discussed presidential candidate Andrey Gurov and vice-presidential candidate Georgi Kandev. He said the way people linked to their nomination committee presented themselves in public could harm the ticket. "I voted for Gurov to get a top job, but I won't do him any harm now," Borissov said.

Borissov also addressed the pardon Iotova granted as vice president in 2022. "We raised the issue years ago, but why has it only now become so important? In the past, Iotova and Radev granted pardons, while people joined forces against us and held no-confidence votes to prevent us from joining the eurozone," Borissov said.

He attributed his concerns about machine voting to what he described as distrust of voting machines throughout Europe and in the United States, arguing that they could easily be manipulated.