He received a plurality of votes in the first round of the presidential election, ahead of the socialist candidate Ivan Marazov and Bulgarian Business Bloc founder and leader George Ganchev.

At the beginning of his tenure, Petar Stoyanov played a decisive role in one of the most dramatic crisis in the modern history of Bulgaria.

With a majority in the 37th National Assembly, the BSP had the ability to approve the new Cabinet, however President Stoyanov refused to propose it for a vote in Parliament.

President Stoyanov appointed a Caretaker Government headed by Sofia Mayor Stefan Sofianski, who was a member of the Union of Democratic Forces.

Petar Stoyanov ran for a second term in 2001, but lost in the second round to Georgi Parvanov, despite the fact that he was initially leading in the polls.

During a TV debate with the other candidates, Stoyanov produced a classified file containing information about one of them, Bogomil Bonev and his alleged contacts with persons of dubious repute.

One of the presenters, Ivo Indzhev read it out, while the other one, Svetla Petrova, stated that Stoyanov "risked the winner of the dispute being Georgi Parvanov", the socialist candidate who was absent.

It is believed that Stoyanov's actions regarding this classified document deterred many swing voters, who were thus inclined to support Parvanov, due to his more moderate behaviour.

NDSV, the new party of former monarch Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, which had won a majority of seats in the parliamentary election earlier that year, had been expected to support Stoyanov.

However, the leader of the movement then prime minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha announced that he would not vote in the second round, motivated by the desire to save the state the cost of the trip to the village of Banya, where he was registered and this disheartened his followers and voters.

Petar Stoyanov finished second in the first round of voting with 34.9%, behind the socialist candidate Georgi Parvanov with 36.3%, and ahead of Bogomil Bonev with 19.2%.

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