According to Gallup: New mayor of Blagoevgrad

During the next four-year term in the Blagoevgrad local government, there will be a new mayor. According to the sociological surveys of Gallup International Balkan, / the sociological agency with which BNR works/, the candidate of the PP Coalition “We continue the change – Democratic Bulgaria”, Metodi Baikushev, won 51.6 percent of the votes of the citizens of Blagoevgrad. For his opponent, the previous mayor of the municipality, Ilko Stoyanov, who appeared as an independent, supported by GERB, 45.6 percent of voters voted.

For a modern Blagoevgrad and with a Development Strategy until 2030 – this is how the newly elected mayor started his election campaign.

He started his career in 2006 as a junior lawyer at Dimitrov, Petrov & Co. Law Firm. After only 6 years, he became a managing partner.

In 2008, he was a part-time assistant in civil procedural law at the Southwest University “Neofit Rilski”.

Two years later, he was already training state bailiffs under a project of the Ministry of Justice.

In 2017 and 2018, he taught “Business Law” at the American University in Bulgaria. He has been a lecturer at various international arbitration forums in Paris, Prague, Thessaloniki, Krakow and Sofia.

He graduated in law at the Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” and has gone through a number of additional trainings in arbitration, administrative law, territorial planning, construction, administrative and tax law.

Metodi Baikushev is 42 years old. He was born and lives in Blagoevgrad, together with his wife and their two sons.

The previous mayor of Blagoevgrad Municipality, Ilko Stoyanov, had an incomplete two-year term. He ran in a mayoral by-election held in the summer of 2021, along with six other candidates.

The partial vote in Blagoevgrad was reached after the previous mayor, Rumen Tomov, was removed for non-compliance with a provision of the Law on Local Self-Government and Local Administration.

Ilko Stoyanov was a municipal councilor for two terms in the Municipal Council – Blagoevgrad, and deputy mayor of the Municipality of Petrich.

After a run-off in the early elections, on July 4, 2021, Ilko Stoyanov, nominated by PP “There is such a people”, became the mayor of Blagoevgrad.