Free Election Promised in Bulgaria : East Europe: Party leader announces end to Communists’ automatic right to rule.

Bulgarian leader Petar Mladenov today promised free elections by June and an end to the Communist Party’s automatic right to rule.

“We propose that the National Assembly organize new, free democratic elections by the end of May,” Mladenov told a meeting of the party’s decision-making Central Committee.

He also said the party’s guaranteed leading role in society is being scrapped. “The leading role of the party cannot be declared administratively but must come from the trust of the people.”

A Communist Party spokesman told a news conference that the party is proposing to the National Assembly that the article of the constitution guaranteeing the party’s monopoly on power should be scrapped and a new constitution drawn up by the end of 1990.

Mladenov’s announcement at a session of the party’s leadership followed similar moves by the East German and Czechoslovak parties to surrender their absolute grip on power.

It followed a four-week whirlwind of political change in this Balkan country of 9 million, culminating in a pro-democracy rally Sunday in Sofia that drew tens of thousands of people to the streets.

Mladenov, a former foreign minister who took over from veteran hard-liner Todor Zhivkov last month, also proposed a dialogue “with all powers of society that work on the basis of socialism and patriotism.”

But it was not immediately clear whether this dialogue would involve opposition groups that have demanded round-table talks on the future of the country.

Mladenov, whose speech to the policy-making Central Committee was carried by Bulgarian radio, said the party will also hold an extraordinary congress of grass-roots party members next March. This seemed likely to vote in a more reformist Central Committee.

Mladenov also proposed that the Parliament on Thursday vote to set up a commission to investigate allegations of corruption during the 35-year rule of the now disgraced Zhivkov.

While the party Central Committee met to hear Mladenov, a Sofia court registered Eco-Glasnost, an ecological group, as Bulgaria’s first independent organization.

Early elections in Bulgaria, which up until a few weeks ago was a fortress of Stalinism, are likely to favor the Communists; the growing number of still-unregistered political, religious and ecological groups were banned until recently and have had little time to establish themselves.

As the Central Committee plenary meeting continued in closed session, about 12,000 Bulgarians massed in freezing darkness near party headquarters to hold a silent candlelight vigil in support of opposition demands for further political change.