With less than three months to go before the presidential election deadline, there is only one definite presidential candidate - Petar Stoyanov, the current president, who has widespread support.

In June, the president officially announced that he would run as an independent candidate in the upcoming presidential elections. Since then he has received wide ranging political and public backing.

The United Democratic Forces (UtDF), which suffered a major blow in June's parliamentary elections, have said that they will support the president, even as an independent candidate. Stoyanov won the presidential elections as a UtDF candidate in November 1996. The Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization (VMRO) and Gergiovden Movement expressed their support for Stoyanov. The two movements were almost included in the 39th Parliament as a coalition.

In August 50 Bulgarian intellectuals - actors, writers, and musicians - issued a declaration of support of Stoyanov's second presidential mandate. Last week, intellectuals founded two new initiative committees in support of Stoyanov. They are in Plovdiv, Bulgaria's second largest city and Sliven, the president's hometown.

The National Movement Simeon II (NMSII), the ruling party, has not expressed support for Stoyanov. Neither has it declared a presidential candidate from its own members. Its leader Simeon Saxe-Coburg cannot compete because the Constitutional Court ruled in February that candidates need to have resided in Bulgaria for the past five years, with a minimum of 183 days per year spent in the country.

Zhelyu Zhelev, Bulgarian president from 1990 to 1996, expressed interest in running for president again when the web magazine Mediapool interviewed him last month. "If those who wish to put me forward as a candidate change the Constitution by vesting more powers in the president, we can discuss it," said Zhelev. Zhelev met with Saxe-Coburg on August 9, but denied that he had been asked to run for president as the NMSII candidate.

"There is little chance that the BSP will put forward their own candidate at the presidential elections," said Georgi Purvanov, leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), after a meeting of the party's leadership on August 17. He did not exclude the possibility that a candidate might be proposed, either from the BSP-dominated Coalition For Bulgaria (CFB), or someone supported by a wide coalition of major political formations.

Among the possible candidates are Boiko Rashkov, former director of the National Investigation Service, and Stefan Danailov, prominent actor and acting professor. They are both CFB MPs. Another potential BSP candidate is Ivan Slavkov, president of the Bulgarian Football Union and chair of the Bulgarian Olympic Committee. He is also the son-in-law of Todor Zhivkov, Bulgaria's last communist leader before the 1989 changes.

The deadline for holding the next presidential elections is November 18. Parliament will reconvene after the summer break on September 3 and will have to appoint the members of the election commission. They will have to amend the law for election of president and vice-president because it is currently based on the old version of the law for election of MPs.