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26 10 2006 Failure of moderate parties to adapt to times has cleared space for far-right populists.
By Albena Shkodrova in Sofia (Balkan Insight, 26 Oct 06)
Boyko Borisov is one of the most popular politicians in Bulgaria. His name is Boyko. Not boycott. But on the night of the presidential elections that is what he was doing - ignoring the campaign to watch the Real Madrid versus Barcelona football match. "No normal person would miss this," he jested.
As the high-profile mayor of the capital, Borisov stood a good chance of coming second, or even winning, the presidential race. He didn't even run.
Pulling out at an early stage, he took with him his centre-right party, GERB, which at the moment of its establishment in August has already achieved second place in the ratings after the Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP.
The mayor's preference for football rather than campaigning was deeply symbolic. More from lack of will than from anything else, the parties of the centre-right have either failed to take part in these elections - or failed to make an impact.
GERB was not the only party to stay on the sidelines. The National Movement Simeon the Second, NDSV, also did not participate.
As for the Union of Democratic Forces, UDF, The Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, DSB, The Bulgarian National Union, BNS, and Union of Free Democrats, SSD, they united in a half-hearted fashion behind a political novice, the constitutional judge Nedelcho Beronov, who took a mere ten per cent of the votes.
The result is that Bulgarians have been left to choose between a former communist and candidate of the far right in the second round on Sunday.
In the night after the first round of voting, commentators said the main news is that the incumbent president, Georgi Purvanov, became the first head of state in modern times to be re-elected in direct elections. His vote reached almost 64 per cent. The leader of the far-right Ataka party Volen Siderov came second with just over 21 per cent, as it was predicted weeks earlier.
But what the election results revealed was a crisis in Bulgaria's political culture, which has failed to adapt from the ideological battles of the post-communist era to dealing with pragmatic politics.
While eight years ago the political elite was the driving force behind the country's economic reforms, today a sound economy is in place and it is the political culture that lags behind.
This is a disappointing development, for since the fall of communism the mainstay of the reform process has been the large right, democratic bloc, consolidated by a fierce opposition to the communists' political successors in the BSP.
The UDF only took real power in 1997, after a series of weak and non-reformist Socialist governments brought the country to the verge of collapse.
Curbing Moscow's influence and joining NATO and the EU were the goals and as recently as the mid-1990s they appeared anathema to many BSP supporters.
But as the EU integration project advanced and democracy developed, the Socialists adapted to the changing views of their voters, slowly evolving into a mainstream leftist party.
Their priorities began to overlap with those of their opponents. When they entered a coalition with the centrist NDSV in 2001, they happily cooperated in accomplishing what once had been the UDF's exclusive goals.
As membership of NATO and the EU and broad democratic reforms became
cross-party political objectives, it brought greater stability to the country.
At the same time, it deprived political life of grand post-communist ideological battles, turning it into a world of nuances and technical issues.
The parties of the centre-right failed to move with the times.
Having developed around the personality of its leader, Simeon Saxcoburggotski, the NDSV, for example, never established a clear political image. Preoccupied with problems of daily management of the country, for four years at power it missed to build any political platform to unite around.
The democratic wing had just the opposite problems: focusing on ideology, it didn’t develop distinctive management program.
At first, GERB seemed willing to assume leadership of those parties' disappointed voters. Borisov looked like a politician who might pose a serious challenge to Purvanov.
But then GERB backed away from the presidential elections - formally because it felt it was too new to participate but in fact, according to analysts, because Borisov did not want to risk losing the race with Purvanov.
The centrist parties lacked another suitable candidate to rally behind.
After four years in power from 2001 to 2005, the NDSV's popular standing had dropped from about 43 per cent to only 22. When it joined a coalition government in 2005, its political profile slipped even further.
The other moderate parties of the right also crumbled. After swallowing their bitter feuds to unite behind a common candidate, their nominee, Nedelcho Beronov, received a pitiful share of the vote.
Former president Petur Sotyanov says the presidential election results have disproved the idea that the centre-right "can do more united". But this is only part of the truth. United or not, the democratic wing of Bulgarian politics can't do much at present.
Politics has almost ceased to revolve around major differences in values or goals. It increasingly concerns technical and management issues - about how much the state should be involved in health care, or the best way to manage the tax system, or education.
Electors want to see well-communicated programmes, detailing how these technical questions will affect their daily lives. What they got from the centre and the traditional right was more slightly updated anti-communist rhetoric.
The former voters of those parties have now split. In the first round of the elections, about 12 per cent of the old UDF supporters backed Purvanov and about 6 per cent opted for Siderov. In the NDSV camp, about 59 per cent voted for Purvanov and 10 per cent for Siderov. Even worse, 59 per cent of the electorate did not vote at all.
The political space once held by Bulgarian centrists has been overtaken by populists.
And in the meantime, a politician who prefers to stay home watching a
football match rather than take part in the presidential elections remains as popular as ever.
Albena Shkodrova is country director of BIRN Bulgaria. Balkan Insight is BIRN's online publication.
At the beginning of 2010 BIRN network published Digging Deeper - A Guide for Investigative Journalists in the Balkans, written in cooperation with Sheila Coronel, Director of the Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism and professor of professional practice at Columbia University, New York.
