CIRCUS BULGARIA

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. Interestingly, the situation in the current Bulgarian National Assembly can be likened to Catch 22, while the qualities of the leaders of the various political parties evoke none lesser than... Major Major Major Major's father.

Here are a few examples of the kind of debate that has been taking place inside this country's parliament following the 27 October 2024 general election.

The people who usually introduce themselves as pro-Western intellectuals – the PP-DB, or Changes Continued-Democratic Bulgaria (they got 14.2 of the vote) – make two key demands to Boyko Borisov's GERB (which garnered 26.38 percent of the vote). The PP-DB say they will start talking with Boyko Borisov on two conditions. One, that the next prime minister of Bulgaria is not called Boyko Borisov. Ideally, they say, he or she should be an "equally distanced" individual rather than a recognisable political figure.

Paying back in the same coin, Boyko Borisov retorts that if this country is to have a stable, "regular" government rather than the caretaker governments, appointed by President Rumen Radev, that have been running Bulgaria for most of the past two years, or of the Nikolay Denkov "fixture" type, which collapsed ignominiously thus prompting yet another round of snap elections, then he should "naturally" head it.

Secondly, the PP-DB want a cordon sanitaire against Delyan Peevski, the man who split the Turkish dominated DPS, or Movement for Rights and Freedoms, into a DPS-New Beginning, led by himself, and the APS, or Alliance for Rights and Freedoms, run by Ahmed Dogan, the founder of the original DPS. At the latest election, Peevski's New Beginning garnered 11.54 of the vote while those loyal to Dogan got just 7.48 percent.

Peevski, whom the PP-DB, among others, have vilified out of proportion as the epitome of everything that has gone wrong in this country for the past 20 years, was recently sanctioned by the US Magnitsky Act for significant corruption. The act has no legal meaning in Bulgaria. Under it, Peevski is banned from traveling to the United States and theoretically keeping assets in US banks or trading in American dollars.

To Kiril Petkov's vociferous demands for the cordon sanitaire Peevski answers that such a measure would counter the will of about 300,000 Bulgarians who voted for him. And when Petkov insists, Peevski brushes him aside, claiming he (Petkov) is a "narcotics-dependent individual who should be sent to a commune to heal himself." Harvard-educated Petkov, who is married to a Canadian, then asserts he is the father of three children whom he keeps telling drugs are a menace... Boyko Borisov's watches from the sidelines and refuses to sign the cordon sanitaire protocol drafted by the PP-DB.

The extremist Vazrazhdane of Kostadin "Kostya Kopeykin" Kostadinov, who is openly pro-Russian and pro-Putin, uses the situation to push on with its own agenda. He claims no government can emerge in the current parliament and an early election is the only solution to the impasse.

Just about 38 percent of Bulgarians bothered to go to the polls last October, which indicates the majority of voters no longer care. They either believe that nothing depends on their votes or are so disgusted by Bulgaria's MPs, whom they view as a bunch of crooks out to rob whatever is left of the Bulgarian economy, that they switch off their TV sets the moment news gets on the air.

Viewed against this backdrop, peppered with the at times pathetic gesticulations, accusations, demands and counter-demands of the PP-DB, Vazrazhdane, Delyan Peevski, the There Is Such a People and the BSP, Boyko Borisov's GERB appears as a relatively stable and monolithic political entity. It tries to appear as if it is bringing a measure of common sense. Borisov may not be as confident as he was in the late 2000s, when he rose to power, but he continues to exude authority. Significantly, his populist instincts, so far unrivalled by anyone in today's Bulgarian politics, lead him to continue to speak to ordinary voters the way he always has. The You-Are-Simple-People-and-I-Am-a-Simple-Man-so-We-Will-Understand-Each-Other adage continues to work wonders.

Significantly, Borisov knows that he is unable to form a government by himself because he needs the support of two or even three other players inside the National Assembly. And he is convinced that if no viable government gets put forward in the first round of the post-election negotiations, it is unlikely any other option will emerge at all. This spells yet another general election next year, which everyone – with the exception of Vazrazhdane and Delyan Peevski – wants to eschew.

The situation, at least from the standpoint of an outside observer, evokes Major Major Major Major's father again. As he had made much money and was therefore wise, everyone sought him for advice on all subjects. "As ye sow, so you shall reap," he counselled one and all, and everyone said "Amen."