BULGARIA POLITICS

In Joseph Heller's timeless masterpiece, Catch 22, there is a minor character named Major Major Major Major. Major Major Major Major Major has a father, whom Heller describes as a "God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist... who advocates thrift and hard work, and disapproves of loose women who turn him down." Catch 22 was a very popular book in Communist Bulgaria because those who read it did not have to be very imaginative to see the obvious parallels with real life this side of the Iron Curtain.

Predictably, the 27 October snap ballot – the 7th in three years – failed to elect a viable parliament capable of producing a long-term government. With a turnout of just over 38 percent – slightly higher than the pervious election in June 2024 – it took about 10,700 votes for an MP to get elected.

As Bulgaria is heading for a seventh snap election in just three years, two events mark the month of August, which is traditionally seen as a holiday season for working Bulgarians. Whilst Sofia has been going through repeated heat waves, the Constitutional Court judges repealed most of the much-hailed but apparently ill-thought-out Constitutional reforms passed last year in a rare show of agreement between Boyko Borisov's GERB, the DPS, or Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and the PP-DB-DSB, or Changes Continued-Yes Bulgaria-Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria.

As the seventh general election in two years seems unavoidable, Bulgaria is faced with yet another uncertainty. Will the Constitutional Court approve or reject the changes to the basic law pushed through at the end of 2023 at the insistence of the now besmirched PP-DB-DSB, or Changes Continued-Yes Bulgaria-Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, but accepted with the support of other political parties, including Boyko Borisov's GERB and the Turkish-dominated DPS, or Movement for Rights and Freedoms, that the PP-DB-DSB had been representing as their chief political foes?

As ballot counters concluded the relatively easy task of turning out the record-low number of votes in the 9 June general election, some unpleasant truths emerged. Politicians and analysts of all shades and hues will have to stomach them unless they want to consign themselves to the dustbin of history. Here are the most important ones.

Тhe overwhelming majority of Bulgarians who will go to the polls in June to elect their next National Assembly will do so with one all-pervasive sentiment. Disgust. They are disgusted at the incompetence and hypocrisy of the former rulers, the markedly pro-Western, liberal grouping of the CC-DB, or Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria. They are disgusted by the Monkey-See-Monkey-Do mentality of their pious followers, who like to introduce themselves as "smart and beautiful" intellectuals.

In the 1990s and early 2000s Bulgaria, a former East bloc country, was an enthusiastic applicant to join both NATO and the EU. Twenty years later the initial enthusiasm has waned. There are now parties with sizeable, albeit still politically insignificant, support that demand a Bulgarexit, first from NATO and then from the EU. Their declared "love" for Russia is being echoed even by people who approve of NATO, the EU and the West in general.

Тo understand the current predicament of the Changes Continued political party, one of whose leaders, Kiril Petkov, was prime minister in 2021-2022, one needs to consider the characteristically complicated background.

Kiril Petkov and his mate, Asen Vasilev, are both Harvard-educated economists who returned to Bulgaria and started their own businesses. Their ascend into politics was somewhat unexpected. They were put forward by... President Rumen Radev.

In spite of the protestations of the ruling "fixture" between PP-DB (Changes Continued of Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev and Democratic Bulgaria of Gen Atanas Atanasov and Hristo Ivanov) and Boyko Borisov's GERB about the "top national priority" of joining the euro zone, Bulgaria is still failing to handle the nuts and bolts. Its prospects to adopt the euro, notwithstanding its attempts of almost 15 years, are in the future.

While Bulgarians left, right and centre are quibbling over the fate of a pile of stones crowned by some sculpted Red Army soldiers in central Sofia, the state prosecution service quietly terminated a case started by Vasil Bozhkov, one of this country's wealthiest entrepreneurs, alleging he was forced to give north of 60 million leva ($35 million) in bribes to Boyko Borisov (then prime minister), Vladislav Goranov (then finance minister) and Sevdelina Arnaudova (then Boyko Borisov's chief public relations officer).

Polling agencies got it wrong again

If the multitude of opinion polls were to be trusted, the election results would have been very different. The PP-DB (Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria), which currently runs the country through its coalition government with Boyko Borisov's GERB (which it insists is not a coalition but a "fixture") should have won Sofia hands down. It should have done a lot better in most bigger towns and cities as well.

Colourful and gilt-domed, looking like a toy, the St Nicholas the Miracle-Worker church in central Sofia is known to Bulgarians simply as the Russian Church. It is a hot spot for tourists vying to take a selfie with the gold-plated domes, the fairy-tale facade decorations and ornaments, and perhaps join the line of pilgrims in front of the crypt who wait patiently to be able to deliver their wish notes to the tomb of Serafim Sobolev.

Notwithstanding the amendments to the Constitution proposed by Nikolay Denkov's "fixture" (the word he uses to describe the government), several bits of legislation put forward by the rulers and quickly voted into law have raised eyebrows and prompted a significant amount of laughter. Critics have viewed them not as just poorly thoughtover and hastily fixed (pun unintended) pieces of legal literature but as evidence that in spite of the huge claims of competence by the PP-DB "clever and beautiful" intellectuals the goods actually delivered have been at least substandard.

А crudely-cut cartoon circulating on social media shows Former Foreign Minister Solomon Pasi, who is Jewish, being held by two Nazi-clad soldiers. The text (in Bulgarian) reads: "If you don't want Russian gas, we will give you some of ours."

This journal has rarely abstained from calling a spade a spade whenever it comes to the Bulgarian political apple cart, but in this particular instance we thought the cartoon was so tasteless, offensive and plainly disgusting that we will not reprint it, not even for illustration purposes.

In 2013, when the Inland Revenue agency started a probe into alleged wrongdoing by then President Rosen Plevneliev, he famously excused himself: I am not a Martian. Plevneliev had been a minister for Boyko Borisov. The latter personally handpicked his nomination for president  – explaining, in his inimitable style, that if he had put forward a "donkey," it would have been elected.

Three years after the event, the massive street protests that blocked the traffic in Central Sofia in the course of months, in 2020, seem to have achieved their original aims. Firstly, Boyko Borisov is no longer prime minister, and stands little chance of being reelected again. Second, Ivan Geshev has been fired as general prosecutor, the Bulgarian equivalent of the US attorney general, the British director of public prosecutions, Germany's federal public prosecutor general and France's procureur général. One of his deputies, Borislav Sarafov, was appointed a caretaker replacement.

If anyone believed that the CC-DB, or Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria alliance, who lost the April election and are now the second largest party in the Bulgarian National Assembly, were serious in their declared and oft-repeated pledges they wanted to dismantle what they called Boyko Borisov's "mafia state" must have been in for a a bit of a surprise. According to a twelfth-hour agreement, GERB and the CC-DB announced they would actually become friends (!) in the name of "civilisational choices" and "geopolitical orientation" instead.

Despite the massive and apparently rather expensive advertising campaign, which involved TV, print, outdoor and plenty of Facebook, the Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) alliance lost the 2 April election.

Whenever developed democracies hold a general election, at stake – usually – are pressing issues of the day. Oil, terrorism, immigration. Nuclear weapons. Abortion rights. Inflation. Climate change. The cost of living...

Not in Bulgaria, however. The election campaign – tepid even in Bulgarian standards – ahead of the 2 April ballot, focused on... a pile of stones in central Sofia. In an almost verbatim repetition of the old adage, some political parties bill it a monument to terrorists whereas others see it as a monument to... freedom fighters.

It was called by President Rumen Radev, who is now the de facto ruler of this country, acting through the caretaker governments he appoints, because the previous election, in October 2022, failed to produce any kind of political alignment that could form a credible government.

There are indications that the same type of impasse may result after the next election, but there are some important details analysts, voters and observers should take into consideration.

A total of 23 political parties and alliances have registered to take part in the ballot.