LIDER (party)

LIDER ( Bulgarian ЛИДЕР ) is a Bulgarian liberal party around the large entrepreneur and energy investor Christo Kowatschki . It was founded in 2007 with chairman Kantscho Filipow, among others by Kowatschki.

The LIDER party has few sponsors, but they have donated larger amounts: 24 companies, mainly from the energy sector. Several of Christo Kowatschki's companies are among the donors.

In the European elections on June 7, 2009, she surprisingly won 5.70% of the vote in coalition with the Nowoto Wreme party and thus narrowly missed entry into the European Parliament. The party and especially Kowatschki were accused by some observers of having put pressure on its employees in many places to vote for the LIDER party. Three out of four voters in Pernik and Bobow Dol , where Kowatschki operates thermal power stations and coal mines, voted for LIDER. Kowatschki denies threatening workers with dismissal or luring them with promises of jobs: " ... I only asked my people to vote for our party, " he says.

For the 2009 parliamentary elections on July 5, 2009, she ran again in the LIDER-Nowoto Wreme coalition. It is supported by the leadership of the Democratic Party , but not by its base. However, it could not convince the voters, won just over 3% of the vote and failed to make it into parliament.

On November 18, the Bulgarian Interior Minister and chairman of the GERB party Tsvetan Tsvetanov reported that the LIDER party was a joint project of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS).