Petar Beron (politician)

Petar Beron Петър Берон
Chairman of the Union of Democratic Forces
In office 1990
Preceded by	Zhelyu Zhelev
Succeeded by	Philip Dimitrov
Personal details
Born	14 March 1940 Sofia, Bulgaria

Petar Beron (Bulgarian: Петър Берон), born 14 March 1940 in Sofia, Bulgaria, is a Bulgarian academic and politician. He was leader of the United Democratic Forces (SDS) in from August 1990 to 4 December 1990 (heading the second-largest political party at the time). He was a vice-presidential candidate in 1992 and a presidential candidate in 2001 and 2006, without success.

Petar Beron was born in Sofia on 14 March 1940. He graduated from the Biology-Geology-Geography Department of the Kliment Ohridski University in Sofia.

Beron is fluent in Bulgarian, Russian, English and French.

From 1963 up to 1969 he worked as a biologist at the Institute of Zoology with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, becoming a research fellow between 1969 and 1978. He was then promoted to Senior Research Fellow.

Beron was a founding member and secretary of the SDS (a coalition of multiple opposition groups) when it was formed on 7 December 1989. He was elected to the 7th Grand National Assembly in the first democratic elections in 1990.

The SDS leader, Zhelyu Zhelev, was elected president by the Grand National Assembly on August 1, 1990 and so Beron was elected to succeed him as chairman of the party. His tenure was relatively short lived. On December 4 he stepped down after admitting that he had worked as a police informer under the old regime. Beron was one of 70 MPs who were named in secret documents as having spied for the state security. Evidence was uncovered that he was a police informant code-named Bontcho who kept tabs on his colleagues for the secret police. In his defense he insisted that his police activities served the state and not the Communist Party.

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