Bulgaria's former Communist Party has achieved a majority in the new National Assembly after Sunday's runoff elections with 211 seats secured so far, Prime Minister Andrei Lukanov said Monday.
"This is the first time in history that a socialist party of our ilk has won in a fair and free election," an exuberant Lukanov told reporters.Lukanov, a 51-year-old economist credited with reshaping the former Communist Party under its new banner as the Bulgarian Socialist Party, was among former Communist candidates to win his constituency seat in Sunday's runoff.
The Central Electoral Commission confirmed the socialists were leading with 211 seats in the 400-member parliament, and the opposition Union of Democratic Forces had 132.
Runoffs were held Sunday in 81 constituencies where no candidate achieved more than 50 percent of the vote in the first round. Results from 14 of these constituencies were still unknown.
The voting was the second round of Bulgaria's first free election in more than four decades. The first round was held June 10.
The outcome makes Bulgaria the only country in Eastern Europe to have returned its rulers to power in multiparty elections.
Confirmation of the socialists' victory Monday coincided with the 108th anniversary of the birth of Georgi Dimitrov, the ideologist who shaped the face of Communist Bulgaria.
The elections were made possible after hardline communist leader Todor Zhivkov was toppled last November after 35 years of totalitarian rule, during which the Communist Party had a constitutional right to govern.
Although Lukanov won his constituency seat in Sunday's runoff, another popular BSP politician, Defense Minister Dobri Dzhourev, was defeated in his constituency of Trojab by Yordan Vassilev, the editor of the UDF's newspaper, Democratsia.
Foreign observers monitoring the vote reported some abuses and irregularities, but these did not appear serious enough to invalidate the outcome.
Lukanov Monday said he was confident he could form a government with broad support.