site.btaConfidence Must Be Restored before New Party Is Set Up and New Chair Elected - MEP Kyuchyuk Says

"Let's not rush the idea of setting up a new party and electing a new chair. This requires above all regaining our members' and supporters' confidence," Ilhan Kyuchyuk MEP of the Renew Europe Group and member of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) Chairmanship Council told journalists here on Thursday.

He was approached for comment on media speculation that since November 2024 the MRF faction loyal to the party's Honorary Chair Ahmed Dogan has been building local chapters for “a new liberal, democratic party” and planned to launch it once the Supreme Court is through with the litigation about the right to use the MRF name and abbreviation brand ends. Dogan himself will reportedly stay outside the new party project but will back it.

"Dzhevdet Chakarov's resignation is his personal act. I hope he will have the decency to step forward and explain what made him to sit in Delyan Peevski's lap once for more than a year he had been one of the fiercest opponents of this model. Why should I recall his [Chakarov's] positions that the Peevski model must be dismantled and that the MRF, in its authentic form, will do everything possible to assist this process. Which is true? What he spoke before, or his last act that we saw?" Kyuchyuk asked.

"Nobody expects the chair of a party to throw in the towel, nor does an army expect the general to surrender," he went on to say.

In July 2024, the once solid Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) split into two factions: Democracy, Rights and Freedoms (DRF), loyal to MRF honorary chairman Ahmed Dogan and chaired by Chakarov, and MRF - New Beginning, headed by Dogan's one-time protege Delyan Peevski. Both factions claim they are the genuine party.
 
On May 27, Chakarov surprisingly resigned as MRF Chair and DRF floor leader. MRF - New Beginning announced that Peevski and Chakarov “have decided to close the page of division and confrontation,” so that “the MRF can emerge united and stronger than ever”.

The Dogan faction has taken strong exception to Chakarov's step and denied that healing the rift is possible.

On May 29, Chakarov submitted a motion to the Supreme Court of Cassation, stating that he was abandoning in toto a cassation appeal against a Sofia City Court's denial of a request to register an expulsion of Peevski and its supporters from the MRF on August 27, 2024. Granting Chakarov's request, the Supreme Court dismissed the case, leaving Peevski as the only legitimate leader of the party.