2019 will be remembered with complicated, tense and contradictory political processes in Bulgaria.Shortly before the European elections at the end of May the government was shaken by accusations that some of its members had acquired properties at prices below their market value. As a result, some key figures left the political stage. GERB’s Deputy Chairman Tsvetan Tsvetanov left the Bulgarian National Assembly and later abandoned all positions in GERB party. This country’s Ministers of Justice and Agriculture Tsetska Tsacheva and Rumen Porozhanov resigned from their positions despite their assurances that they did not break the law when they bought real estate properties. The Chairperson of the National Assembly Energy Committee Delyan Dobrev also left Bulgaria’s Parliament.

Despite the property scandal, GERB won the elections for European Parliament and the early Parliamentary elections predictions did not materialize. However, the bad elections results of two of the political formations part of the United Patriots coalition – NFSB and Ataka accelerated the processes of decay in the so-called small coalition partner. The third party in the United Patriots coalition- VMRO scored good results at the European elections, but the three political formations performed worse than the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which was the third party at the European elections after GERB and the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

The predictions that GERB would fail at the local elections did not materialize either. It became clear after the run-off elections in the beginning of November that GERB remained leading political power. It lost positions in some district cities, but even there the number of municipal councilors nominated from GERB was highest. The results of the United Patriots coalition at the local elections were similar to those at the European Parliament elections held earlier this year. Only VMRO performed successfully and the results of NFSB and Ataka parties were unsatisfactory. The biggest opponent of the nationalistic parties the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) increased the number of its municipal councilors and expanded its geographical presence beyond the regions with high concentration of ethnic Turks.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party contends that it improved its election results at the European and the local elections. However, this party does not stand the chance of turning from an opposition power into ruling party yet. Moreover, this political party is in a process of painful internal division. This is proven by the opinion of the former leader of BSP and current President of the Party of European Socialists Sergei Stanishev that BSP started to resemble GERB more and more and that it has been turning from a democratic into a populist party, where its chairperson imposes her personal will to others. 

The processes of decay in the United Patriots coalition did not justify the fears of collapse of the ruling coalition GERB-United Patriots. At the end of 2019 GERB is first political force in this country’s Parliament with 96 MPs, followed by the Bulgarian Socialist Party – 79 MPs and DPS (25 MPs). The United Patriots (21 MPs) and GERB (95 MPs) guarantee 116 votes in Parliament and the majority is easily secured with votes of 8 independent MPs, 25 MPs from DPS and 12 MPs from Volya party.

In the beginning of December Market Links published a sociological survey about the electoral adjustments in this country. GERB remains first political force with 18.2% of the votes, followed by BSP with 16% of the votes. If early Parliamentary elections were held today, 7.3% of the Bulgarians will vote for DPS, 4.9% will vote for Democratic Bulgaria and 4.3% will support the United Patriots coalition. Only 1.2% of the Bulgarians would vote for Volya, which is currently represented at the National Assembly. The political party No Such State headed by the popular TV host Slavi Trifonov would earn 7.8% of the votes and become third political force in Bulgaria. However, the court refused to register this party. In other words, the political status quo in Bulgaria can change only if real political alternative appears. It is hard to predict whether such an alternative will appear in 2020.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov