Another chance for the new government in Bulgaria

In the beginning of 2013 the Bulgarian government resigned in the face of protests, which claimed it to be illegitimate and bought by oligarchs behind the opposition. While the coalition was officially composed of 6 parties, it was de facto dominated by Boiko Borisov, leader of GERB – a relatively new party to the center-right in the Bulgarian political landscape and which held 117 out of 240 seats. The government fell mere months before the end of its term, making way for new elections. The results of the latter were a catastrophy. Four parties made it into the Parliament: GERB with 97 seats, BSP (Bulgarian Socialist Party, self-described successor of the Bulgarian Communist Party) with 84, MRF (Movement for Rights and Freedoms, arguably anti-constitutional centrist party, consisting of and catering to the Turkish and Gipsy minorities) with 36 and Attack (nationalist) with 23. With such a distribution of seats an unprecedented coalition was made, between a socialist, an ethnic and a nationalist party, altogether excluding the winner of the elections from state governance. Massive protests followed almost immediately, reaching peak attendance of about 100 000 people in Sofia alone, and going on for months but to no avail. After having completely overridden the voice of its people the government finally resigned over the bankruptcy of one of Bulgaria’s major banks and thus the sparkling of a financial crisis.

An oversaturated parliament

The newly elected government contains eight parties with extremely varying political views, and none of them have achieved a runaway success at the election. The winners by far have once again been GERB but this time their 33% translate to only 84 seats, barely above a third of the overall count. Even with the addition of the 23 seats secured by the Reformist Block, a newly formed coalition of rightist parties, this leaves a gap of 14 seats for a majority to be secured. The opposition, classically lead by BSP and MRF was not only represented by 77 seats altogether (39 and 38 respectively). This situation meant that in order for a government to be formed by either of the aforementioned two major forces they would have to seek support from the bottom four parties, constituting of the PF (Patriotic Front, newly formed nationalist party 19 seats), BWC (Bulgaria Without Censorship, newly formed populist party, 15 seats), Attack (now only left with 11 seats) and ABV (Alternative for Bulgarian Renovation, a new center-left party founded by former members of BSP, 11 seats). However such a coalition was viewed as difficult to form and questionable to rule for two main reasons.

The difficulties of forming a government

Firstly on an ideological level, the parties are too different to be compatible. Neither GERB and RB nor BSP and MRF would be expected to form a coalition with nationalistic parties – the former are supposed to represent modernistic, pro-Western political views which strongly contradicts with the isolationist, pro-Russian position held by the Attack and PF. BSP and MRF on the other hand share similar views on the external policy of Bulgaria as the nationalist parties, but their internal policies could not be more far apart considering the ethnic nature of MRF.
The second reason might be even more important – it is the relations between the parties, and by extension between their electorates. Both the GERB/RB and BSP/MFR have a certain stable base of voters representing the extreme of most social scales. The electorate of the formers is statistically younger people living in the cities with better than average education, who are pro-EU and extremely anti-communist ; according to the statistics the electorate of the latter is older people living in the cities with (below) average education who are eurosceptic and mostly pro-communist. Because of these characteristics of their voters the parties themselves are unable to undertake joint actions in the governance of the state as any such action would necessarily be seen as negative by both their electorates. The lack of tolerance between the parties even led to their pre-elections campaigns being largely based on being « anti-other parties » rather than pro certain concrete goals.
Keeping these two factors in mind it becomes apparent that the wider coalition needed for a functioning government would be difficult to form and even more so to be kept stable. Many even suggested that new elections be held in order to look for a Parliament composition more suitable to rule.

A broad coalition towards an unstable future

A broad coalition was finally formed lead by GERB (who appointed 11 ministers and the PM) and RB (7 ministers) with the support of ABR (1 minister) and PF (no ministers). While this solution allowed for a working government lead by the parties representing the progressive and educated part of society, the participation of nationalists and socialists (in the Eastern European sense, meaning direct successors of the pre ’90 communists) is viewed by many as too much of a compromise and as tainting the whole coalition. Furthermore how the serious differences in ideologies are going to be addressed remains to be seen.

As a conclusion after yet another elections a new government was created, the third one for the last two years (fifth if provisional governments are to be counted). With so many various parties in parliament this sole fact is a grand accomplishment already but the question remains – is it going to work this time or will we see it collapse before the end of its term ? As much as I want to see it succeed for the sake of finally having a period of political stability in Bulgaria I remain skeptical. Even if it manages to overcome its internal disputes, and that’s already saying something, will this government finally be able to survive the discontent of its people? I doubt it...