The reformist wing of the Bulgarian Communist Party had obviously thought that by ditching Zhivkov and committing themselves to the idea of a multi-party system, they stood a good chance of being perceived as the authors of democratic change, thereby winning back the trust of the populace. Initially, however, their strategy ran into trouble. Throughout December 1989 the Bulgarian parliament was regularly under siege from protesters demanding a speeding up of democratic reforms, most notably the abandonment of the Communist Party's leading role in society, hitherto enshrined in the constitution. The Party was also under pressure from its own hardliners, who tried to sabotage democratization by organizing nationalist demonstrations and strikes throughout the country in protest at the government's retreat from Todor Zhivkov's anti-Turkish policies.

In 1990 the dismantling of Communist power structures began in earnest. Separation of party and state was symbolized when Petâr Mladenov became state president and relinquished the Party chairmanship to Aleksandâr Lilov , previously the victim of one of Zhivkov's purges. Former hardliners were removed from government, Mladenov's protégé Andrei Lukanov became prime minister, and the Party itself changed its name to the Bulgarian Socialist Party ( BSP ).

Multiparty elections were called for June 1990 , too early for either the BSP or the opposition SDS to establish themselves as credible democratic movements. The BSP, despite verbal commitments to democratic socialism, still included far too many dyed-in-the-wool Communists for people to take its new identity seriously; while the SDS, a loose coalition of newly formed parties and citizens' pressure groups, could agree on little save for a hatred of Communism and a desire to speed up market reforms.

Public uncertainty over the economic changes proposed by the SDS played into the hands of the BSP, which garnered 45 percent of the vote and an absolute majority in the Veliko Narodno Sâbranie or Constituent Assembly . Much of this success was attributed to the conservative nature of the Bulgarian countryside, where the Socialist Party machine was far more effective in reaching potential voters than its cash-starved opponents. The other main beneficiary of the poll was the Movement for Rights and Freedoms - Dvizhenieto za prava i svobodi or DPS . Formed to protect Bulgaria's Muslims, the DPS gained solid support from the country's Turks and pomaks, giving it 23 MPs in the new chamber. However, Bulgaria's urban population had voted en masse for the SDS, and many suspected that the BSP's majority had been artificially inflated by vote rigging .