The election debate between GERB leader Boyko Borissov and the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party Kornelia Ninova that has been subject to long negotiations failed due to contradictions between the two political parties related to its format. Despite the high public interest towards such debate and the willingness of the three biggest national TV stations to broadcast live that election dispute, GERB insisted that expert teams from both parties had to participate at the debate as well. BSP, however, insisted that the debate had to be held between the leaders of the two political parties only. GERB accused Kornelia Ninova of escaping from the debate and in return BSP said that Boyko Borissov was afraid of answering provocative questions. The Bulgarian audience was unable to hear from the leaders of BSP and GERB the main theses of the political parties that stand biggest chance to win the forthcoming Parliamentary elections. However, several points became clear after the failure of the debate.

It became clear that the fears of a detrimental for the country coalition between GERB and BSP after the elections are quite unrealistic. The right-wing Reformist Bloc is not the only political formation that disapproves of such government coalition. Many Bulgarians, who according to sociological surveys, have no clear preference for either a leftist or a rightist government, also reject to see a coalition between GERB and BSP.

The disputes relating to the hardly probable debate between GERB and BSP proved that those two parties are showing aggression towards each other. According to analysts, it may encourage voters to cast their ballots for smaller political parties at the forthcoming elections. It is very difficult to predict how political parties would group after the elections and what type of coalition cabinet will be formed, because according to latest sociological surveys, the electoral support towards GERB and BSP has almost reached parity. The latest public opinion surveys show that 36% of the respondents prefer a center-right coalition with the participation of GERB party and that 29% of the respondents prefer a center-left coalition with the participation of the Bulgarian Socialist Party in the country's government. However, electoral support towards GERB party has been decreasing and the support towards BSP has been on the rise recently. Thus, according to some political experts, the third biggest political formation - the Patriotic Front consisting of NFSB, Ataka and VMRO may play the key role in the establishment of the next regular cabinet. BSP leader Cornelia Ninova did not rule out the possibility of forming a coalition with the Patriotic Front. She pointed out that the two impossible coalitions were between BSP and GERB and BSP and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms. The Patriotic Front is still refraining from making any comments on that topic, but they have been repeatedly saying that GERB and BSP have used elements of their political programme.

Thus, we witnessed the attempts of three national TV stations, which usually jostle for more viewers, to make the country's main political opponents overcome their mutual irreconcilability and attend the election debate. BNT, BTV and Nova offered the two political parties to broadcast on Wednesday evening the debate between their experts first, followed by the debate between GERB leader Borissov and BSP leader Ninova. Finally, the three TV stations voiced readiness to broadcast the debate between Ninova and Borissov on another day. GERB and BSP have not yet commented whether they were ready to launch such debate later on. The uncompromising attitude demonstrated by both GERB and BSP set a bad tone to the election campaign and proved right the concerns of some political analysts that the formation of a cabinet after the early elections will be a very difficult task.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov