For a month now, an open power struggle has been unfolding in the Nikola Kozlevo Municipal Council between supporters of Rumen Radev and those aligned with Delyan Peevski. Until recently, the local parliament was dominated by councillors close to Mayor Ismail Ibryam, an outspoken supporter of Peevski. For a year and a half, Ibryam and “New Beginning” effectively controlled the entire local government with the backing of a pro-mayor majority.
Following the 19 April elections and the collapse of DPS’s role in national government, the balance of power in the Nikola Kozlevo council also shifted.
At a 30 April meeting, pro-mayor council chairman Halil Ali was removed from office and Turhan Karakash returned to lead the local parliament. During the election campaign, Karakash had openly worked for Radev’s political formation, “Progressive Bulgaria”.
Karakash was backed by 10 of the 13 councillors. This gave the new chairman a considerably more stable majority than the previous one, which had usually depended on a one- or two-vote margin.
But the changeover was accompanied by a scandal. The outgoing chairman refused to include the proposal to elect a new chairman on the agenda.
What followed was an open confrontation.
Halil Ali refused to hand over the keys to his former office or the municipal council’s records to his successor. To this day, Turhan Karakash says he has no access to the council’s offices, incoming and outgoing correspondence or the official seal of the local legislature.
“There has never been such a precedent. How many mayors and council chairmen have changed over the years, and this has never happened before – for a chairman who has been removed to block the work of the municipal council by refusing to return the keys to the new chairman, the council’s archive and the official laptop containing its documents,” Karakash said at the council’s latest meeting on 28 May.
A change of guard
The meeting was convened on the initiative of the chairman and a group of councillors. Its agenda included the election of new members and chairpersons of the standing committees and a new deputy chairman of the Municipal Council.
According to Karakash, the mayor’s team had most demonstratively refused to submit any reports for consideration at the meeting.
The session again began with a confrontation between the former and current council chairmen.
Halil Ali called for the meeting to be cancelled and accused Karakash of failing to send the minutes of the previous meeting to the regional administration within the statutory seven-day period. According to Ali, this made the election of the new chairman unlawful.
“We cannot send the minutes because they have not been stamped,” Karakash replied, accusing his predecessor of deliberately blocking the council’s work by refusing to hand over its archive and official seal.
“You are not returning the archive, you are not returning the keys to the office, and then you have the audacity to accuse us of failing to send the minutes,” Karakash said angrily.
The new chairman said he had spent a month asking both the municipal administration and his predecessor to give him the keys to the council’s offices, but still had no access to the rooms or archive.
As a result, on 7 May he reported the matter to the District Prosecutor’s Office and said he was expecting law enforcement authorities to ensure access to the council’s premises.
The subsequent argument revealed that Halil Ali had handed over “all the documents and seals” to the municipal secretary.
“Why did you give them to the secretary? Why didn’t you hand them over to the new chairman with a handover protocol, as required?” Karakash asked.
Ali responded that the council’s documentation was maintained by “the person appointed by the mayor”, and again accused the new chairman of failing to send the minutes to the regional administration.
“How am I supposed to send them when I cannot enter the office to assign an outgoing number and put the seal on them?” Karakash replied.
He in turn accused the former chairman and the mayor of Nikola Kozlevo of humiliating the entire municipal council by continuing to hold the council’s seal and documentation.
“I am already ashamed to say that I am from Kozlevo. They are laughing at us everywhere,” Karakash said angrily.
Only 15 minutes into the meeting did Mayor Ismail Ibrаyм enter the chamber. He too began arguing with the new chairman and striking the table.
The mayor tried to intervene while the dispute was underway, but Karakash told him he could speak once he was given the floor.
The agenda was then put to a vote and approved by 10 votes in favour, two against and one abstention.
When the vote demonstrated the solid majority behind the new chairman, the mayor walked out of the meeting in protest.
No representative of the administration remained in the chamber, despite the legal requirement that the mayor or an authorised municipal official attend council meetings.
A new balance of power
The councillors also changed the composition and leadership of the municipality’s six standing committees.
Galin Georgiev from the Bulgarian Socialist Party was elected chair of the Budget and Finance Committee. Husein Nazim will head the Municipal Property Committee, Ahmed Ahmed the committee overseeing European programmes, Biser Mitev from the New DPS the healthcare committee, Veneta Dincheva from the BSP the education committee, and Fahri Saliev the anti-corruption committee.
Saliev and Mitev are members of the New DPS group, which had previously been aligned with the mayor.
The new distribution of power makes one thing clear: Mayor Ismail Ibrаyм is now left with only three votes in the Municipal Council and is unlikely to be able to push through decisions as easily as he did before.
On the proposal of a municipal councillor, two deputy chairmen of the local parliament were also elected – Veselin Angelov and Fahri Saliev.
