BYE-BYE, BOYKO!

Bulgarians have never been so dissatisfied with their elected politicians. At the 19 April election, the eighth in five years, both the turnout of about 40 percent (extremely low in Western but relatively high in Bulgarian standards) and the voting pattern suggest that that this time around a genuine change may be in the offing. Here are the key takeaways.

• Election campaigns matter little. The one-month-long runup to the 19 April ballot was so dull and boring that some Bulgarians did not realise it was going on at all. Instead of laying out programmes and agendas, fine-tuning visions for the future and explaining to the public what alliances they will make in order to attain them, most political parties concerned themselves chiefly with explaining... who they will never be friends with. To put it in another way, they were out to make new enemies rather than new friends.
• Pollsters are not to be trusted. Opinion polls worldwide must always be taken with a pinch of salt. There is always the possibility of rogue results, and that is a known fact of life reputable Western media always take into consideration. Not in Bulgaria. Local polling agencies are usually on the payroll of a political party. They are supposed to produce results that suit their paymasters rather than the general public or the supposedly neutral media. They capitalise on the Bulgarian deeply ingrained conviction that individual votes do not matter because they cannot change anything, and that is why it is better to go with the flow rather than against it. The actual outcome of the 19 April election manifests in brutal terms that pollsters were plainly wrong: 30 percent is way away from 45 (pun unintended).
• Extremist populism is on the wane. The Vazrazhdane, or Revival, party led by Kostadin "Kostya Kopeykin" Kоstadinov, which promotes itself as nationalist but is in fact strongly anti-European and pro-Putin, almost collapsed. Its cries for reinstating the lev and ditching the euro (which Bulgaria has just adopted) are falling on deaf years. Revival will probably implode – sooner, rather than later – following the example of Ataka, the similarly extremist party led by Volen Siderov (if anyone remembers who he was) in the mid-2000s.
• Everyone to the right. With former President Rumen Radev now commanding a comfortable majority in the new National Assembly there will be little to no opposition, at least not on an ideological level. The only political party that broadcast more socially conscious ideas, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, or BSP, failed to jump over the 4 percent threshold. Ironically, it is the heir to the Bulgarian Communist Party which not only ruled this country in 1944-1989, but was by far the oldest political grouping, dating back to the late 19th century. Gone with the wind now.
• Saviours? What saviours? Critics of Gen Rumen Radev claim he cheated Bulgarians into believing he was a saviour, a deus ex machina. They claim he is a newcomer to politics who has yet to learn the intricacies of the Bulgarian political landscape. But Radev is not a newcomer because he was president of this country for almost ten years, or longer than the majority of the home-grown politicians vying for a seat in the National Assembly. He won the election so decisively not because he promised any kind of paradise, but because people had been sick and tired of the  Borisov-Peevski "model" that used corruption, nepotism and incompetence as political tools.
• Is Radev pro-Russian? Perhaps the biggest single slur critics directed at Radev was that he was anti-Western and pro-Russian. While it is true the retired Air Force general has been soft-spoken on Putin and Ukraine and at various times verbally indicated reluctance to blankly support the Ukrainian war effort, he has never done a thing to put any such idea into practice. The very fact that he garnered support from the likes of Vazrazhdane (strongly pro-Putin) and Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria (strongly anti-Putin) suggests Radev is mostly middle-ground. Significantly, there is nothing to indicate (notwithstanding claims by his opponents) he as prime minister will question membership of the EU and NATO, especially as two-thirds of all Bulgarians are strongly in favour of both.
• Bulgarians continue to vote with their feet. At about 40 percent, turnout was higher than during the past five years, yet nowhere near what we see in countries like Germany, Denmark or the UK. Apathy and general disenchantment continue to be major factors as far as Bulgarian voting preferences are concerned. It is unlikely this will change in the near future.
• Boyko Borisov is gone. The party he founded, GERB (or Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria), will follow other leadership-centred parties – like the NDSV (or Simeon II National Movement) – and will likely disintegrate once its leader becomes history.