BREAKUP OF BULGARIA'S 'RIGHT WING'

There was a time when the job of this country's "right wing" parties was easy. It was enough for their leaders to protest anti-Communism. Everything that had gone wrong in this country was due to the Communist-era State Security, the secret police that was disbanded a few months after the 1989 collapse of Communism, but that, according to the rightwing leaders, continued to pull the string of everything that made any money in the Bulgaria of the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. Whenever they had nothing else to offer to their voters, the "right wingers" claimed "lustration" was in order. The word, rarely used in modern English, means "purification" or "cleansing." In a political context, lustration was used widely in the Eastern Europe of the 1990s, in countries such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, to exclude collaborators with the Communist regime from public office. Because it was never implemented in Bulgaria – and could no longer be implemented as the overwhelming majority of members of the former Communist establishment are now dead – it became a convenient talking point whenever the "rightwing" leaders had nothing else to talk about.

Since Russia's invasion of Crimea and especially since its unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, the list of bogeymen of Bulgaria's "right wing" was expanded to include Vladimir Putin – and anyone whom they deemed was a real or imaginary supporter of him. This country needed to maintain its "geopolitical orientation," they alarmed. The latter, also infrequently used in English, means, in a Bulgarian context, this country's continued alignment with organisations such as NATO and the EU, of which it has been a full member since 2004 and 2007 respectively. Except for the vociferous minority of a political party that wants Bulgaria out of both and that considers Putin's Russia its greatest friend, no one would seriously consider doing anything to jeopardise post-Communist Bulgaria's chosen course. Yet, maintaining the
"geopolitical orientation" has been a mainstay of the right wing.

The general election in April 2026 indicated beyond any doubt that the waystones used by the self-professed "right wingers" who insist on calling themselves "democrats" were no longer relevant. Though most Bulgarians disapprove of Putin and no longer trust Boyko Borisov, the inadequacies of the "right wing" convinced voters to cast their ballots for Radev. The immediate result? The breakup of the PP-DB-DSB alliance.

Take in the details. Gen Atanas Atanasov, the veteran leader of the DSB, or Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (a political grouping founded in the early 2000s by Former Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, who continues to enjoy some limited support amongst some diehard anti-Communists), has a public approval of just 5-6 percent. DB, or Yes Bulgaria, was founded in the 2010s as an alternative to the DSB. It now has two leaders, Bozhidar Bozhanov and Ivaylo Mirchev. Their personal popularity is just 10-11 percent each. About 60 percent of those polled disapprove of them. PP, or Changes Continued, is the newest of the trio. It was founded by Former Prime Minister Kiril Petkov and his Finance Minister Asen Vasilev in the 2020s, after one of the collapses of Boyko Borisov's government and as a result of then President Rumen Radev's appointment of Petkov as a caretaker prime minister. It is now led by Vasilev. His popularity? About 14-15 percent.

None of these parties have scored any significant election success when they stood alone, and when they united in an alliance ahead of the April 2026 election they garnered even fewer votes.

As the dust from the election settled, the "rightwing" parties sat down to discuss their future. In keeping with the Bulgarian political tradition, their leaders would not resign, even though some (notably Gen Atanasov) had never won any election. One of the options discussed was to unite all three into a single party. Some commentators surmise that would have been a lifesaver for the DSB which, polls indicate, would get no more than 2 percent of any vote if it stood alone. But the PP realised that anyone related to the DSB would be pulling it down, so they decided to leave the alliance altogether.

The political alignment in Bulgaria at the moment is such that Rumen Radev's PB, or Progressive Bulgaria, has every chance not only to complete its four-year term in office, but to successfully stand for a second term. That would provide enough time for anyone of right-of-centre inclinations to set up a new political project.

The real trouble for Bulgaria at the moment, however, is that whilst everyone competes to out-right wing everyone else, there is nothing in the leftwing sector. The BSP, or Bulgarian Socialist Party, which is the heir to the old-time Bulgarian Communist Party, failed to jump over the 4 percent election threshold  and is currently out of the National Assembly. No one of credible leftwing inclinations, in the model of Western Europe's social democratic parties, has emerged. Unless this changes, Bulgaria will be run by politicians who compete in their being rightwing but who have no credible opposition in sight.