Yane Yanev, leader of the Order Law and Justice party, told a news conference on election night that his party had established itself as the second-largest right-wing political force in Bulgaria.

Official figures gave Boiko Borissov's GERB just more than 40 per cent of the vote in Bulgaria's parliamentary elections with 80 per cent counted. Yanev's OLJ got just more than four per cent.

Yanev told the news conference, which ended just after 3am as the sixth of the parties projected to get seats in Parliament, that his party had got five per cent of votes.

But he blamed Turkey, for "election tourism" and the intervention of its secret services, for his party's showing.

For all that, OLJ had doubled its showing compared with its support in the June 2009 European Parliament elections in Bulgaria, Yanev said.

Yanev said that OLJ had seen off Simeon Saxe-Coburg's National Movement for Stability and Progress and Hristo Kovachki's LIDER, neither of which were projected to get enough seats to get into Parliament.

In its future struggle, Yanev said, OLJ had two key priorities - to get a Grand National Assembly convened to amend the constitution, and to change the law to raise the threshold for entry into Parliament. Bulgaria needed no more than 10 political parties, Yanev said.

He said that OLJ acknowledged that GERB had won the election, but would not blackmail Borissov's party for a role in the executive.

Observers noted that with the results of GERB and the Blue Coalition, it was probable that a third party would be needed to make up a governing coalition, and Yanev's party would be a candidate.

Yanev said that his party was making no claims about getting into the executive, but could offer experts to a future government.

Referring to Ahmed Dogan, leader of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, Yanev said that as communist dictator Todor Zhivkov had fallen, Dogan's time would come too, but only Bulgaria's voters could decide Dogan's fate.

He said that on July 8, OLJ would hold a news conference on how Turkey and its "special forces" had interfered in Bulgarian politics.