The Bulgaria 2011 Review: Presidential and Local Elections

On October 23 and 30, 2011, Bulgaria held its first "2 in 1" elections, as Bulgarians voted for their next president and for municipal authorities.

The morale from the event was twofold: (1) The election was marred by an unprecedented flood of organizational and other irregularities which put into doubt the degree to which real democracy is entrenched in Bulgaria. (2) Ruling center-right GERB party led by PM Boyko Borisov has spectacularly retained high rates of popular support, two years since assuming power after July 2009 general elections.

Flawed Free and Fair Elections

A completely revamped electoral legislation failed to curb the vote-buying and so-called "controlled voting" prevalent in many parts of the country, especially among the socially underprivileged. Reports of vote-buying were coming from across the country, in particular among the Roma neighborhoods, including those in urban centers like Sofia and Plovdiv.

A fine example of controlled voting was given by small liberal-styled Leader party, masterminded by Bulgarian energy tycoon Hristo Kovachki, which missed by little the 4% barrier for parliament in 2009, but has been practically inactive since then. Leader still got some 70,000 votes in total in Stara Zagora, Kyustendil and Blagoevgrad regions, where Kovatchki owns companies employing local people. That resulted in mayors of two small towns and a number of municipal councilors elected.

Then come the other worrisome trends, ones for which Bulgaria's electoral authorities are to be held responsible. Long lines were forming at polling booths as officials were unable to process cumbersome ballots. With an unspectacular turnout little over 50%, many voters were just unable to vote due to the queues. The ballots themselves were reported to be semi-transparent, putting into question the secret vote. A string of cases of questionable cancelling of ballots was reported due to excessively stringent rules on marking them.

All of that culminated in unprecedented problems with vote counting. Those were spectacularly exemplified at the Sofia Municipal Electoral Commission, where TV reports showed complete havoc as polling station officials were trying to bring in their bags of ballots and had to wait in despondency for hours well into the morning of the next day for the ballots to be processed. As a grand finale, Bulgaria's Central Electoral Commission announced the final results of the first round of the presidential race almost 2 days after the legally mandated 48-h deadline.

The violations led to a number of complaints tabled at the electoral authorities and courts, including a petition by opposition MPs at Bulgaria's Constitutional Court. No major violations have been officially confirmed by relevant authorities this far and the legality of Bulgaria's 2011 elections has remained uncontested.

Bulgaria's President-Elect Plevneliev and Ruling Party Organizer Tsvetanov

As said above, ruling center-right GERB party cemented its position in power as a result of the elections. Its presidential team of until-then Minister of Regional Development Rosen Plevneliev and Minister of Justice Margarita Popova won with 40% in the first round and 52.6% in the second. In addition, GERB made a brilliant performance at municipal elections, grabbing the mayor seats and council majorities in many of Bulgaria's key cities and towns, including mayors in 14 of Bulgaria's 27 regional centers. In capital Sofia, GERB's incumbent mayor, Yordanka Fandakova, made a flying first-round win with 53% of the vote.

During the election campaign, GERB's Plevneliev struck the figure of a technocrat, foreign to ideologies and vain politicizing, but warm and kind by heart. While some dismissed him as politically incompetent and not articulated enough to be a country's president, others saw him as a welcome change of style in contrast with Parvanov's alleged stilted ways and socialist leanings.

A key argument that troubled the minds of Plevneliev's supporters and adversaries alike was the degree to which he will be independent from Borisov's cabinet and the PM himself to ensure an adequate balance of powers in Bulgaria. Plevneliev's meek ways, combined with Borisov's traditional macho attitude added to skepticism, only to be confirmed by a string of crucial grossly patronizing remarks on the part of the PM to the effect that Plevneliev is under his full control. To make matters even clearer, in the very end of December it was PM Borisov himself who announced that Bulgarian State Agency for National Security ex-head Tsvetlin Yovchev will be Plevneliev's chief of staff once the latter assumes office.

The elections also highlighted the degree to which another figure looms strong within GERB – that of Bulgaria's vice-PM, Minister of Interior and GERB vice-chair Tsvetan Tsvetanov. In a much criticized move, the boss of the Bulgarian police took a leave as minister to head GERB's election campaign headquarters. He spent the campaign weeks tirelessly travelling across the country and mobilizing GERB structures and voters. To his credit, Tsvetanov achieved a spectacular result. This shows him as being very much the hard-working party-maker in GERB, in contrast with his superior Borisov's strong and appealing personal charisma, which undoubtedly has been the main driving force within GERB this far. If any challenge to Borisov's power within the party is to take place, no one but Tsvetanov is in an adequate position to issue it.

MEP Kalfin's Nice Campaign and the Bulgarian Socialists' Stagnation

The Bulgarian Socialist Party (the country's second-strongest) led by ex-PM Sergey Stanishev again failed to cash in from its opposition position and achieved at best mediocre election results. It is true that the Socialists and their coalition partners won the greatest number of municipal councilors across the country, but their electoral wins are generally in small and sparsely populated towns. In contrast, they got mayors in only 8 regional center cities, against GERB's 14. In capital Sofia, their candidate Georgi Kadiev, albeit second with 22%, did not make it to the second round.

The presidential campaign of tandem MEP Ivaylo Kalfin and classic Bulgarian actor Georgi Danailov needs however to be commended. Kalfin struck the figure of an intelligent and articulate critic of the GERB rule, arguing that Bulgaria needs a president offering constructive counterbalance to what he saw as GERB's policies of force, which were allegedly privileging certain economic circles, enforcing unneeded degrees of austerity, forgetting about stimulating the economy, and privileging infrastructure over strategic areas such as education and healthcare. Danailov added life and charisma to the duo. Both he and Kalfin also had the merit not to look and sound like the hoary and stilted socialists that many Buglarians are so tired of.

In the end, Kalfin got 24.3% at the first round of the presidential race, and lost with dignity the second one with a little over 47.4% of the vote. This meant a difference of some 167,000 votes with the winner Plevneliev, more than two times less than the 375,000 votes' difference at the first round.

All the same, the Kalfin-Danailov tandem received at best an anemic support from their own party, the leaders of which failed to issue clear, positive and pro-active messages to their supporters or the general public. Neither those latter manage to show an organization prowess akin to that of GERB under Tsvetanov's management. In the end, the relatively nice result of the socialist tandem has to undeniably go to the personal records of Kalfin and Danailov, who managed to inspire some voters in spite of the unenthusiastic behavior shown by their own party leadership.

The Spooky Role of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms made a traditionally strong showing in Bulgaria's northeast and southeast, where the largest part of the country's sizeable ethnic Turkish minority is concentrated. A feud in the party, in which former vice-chair Kasim Dal voiced harsh criticism of longtime leader Ahmed Dogan, only to be expelled from the party leadership, failed to split the vote for the Movement. Dal had stated he wanted to reform the Movement from the inside, rather than found a new party, but went on to support the small rightist United People's Party led by former rightist MP Maria Kapon, achieving negligible results.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms chose not to table its own presidential candidate, but its role in the presidential race was spooky, if not immediately obvious and certainly obscured by a skewed rhetoric on the part of other parties. In the second round of the presidential race, turnout in the ethnic Turkish dominated areas was much higher for the municipal vote than for the presidential vote (with tens of percentage points). This has led commentators to speculate that Dogan might have reached an undercover deal with GERB, ensuring that its voters will not vote for the Socialist candidate they were more likely to prefer.

The official GERB rhetoric notwithstanding argued that the "Turkish vote" had gone to Kalfin, and that Plevneliev had managed to win in spite of that. Speculations about a deal between GERB and the Movement were further substantiated by repeated comments on the part of Borisov for Dogan's percieved superior intelligence as a politician, as well as a prior announcement by the Movement that after coalescing with the Socialists in the past, it is now making a "right turn". The successful privatization of the Bulgarian state tobacco company Bulgartabac – in which the Movement has been consistently interested in the past – as well as largely pro-goverment stance of the strong New Bulgarian Media Group, co-owned by a Movement MP has added further fuel to such speculations.

After the first round of the presidential race, Ahmed Dogan had said his party will support the socialist candidates, if only Kalfin would give him "a kiss". As things stand, Dogan might well have been kissed by Plevneliev, or Borisov himself.

Bulgaria's 'Traditional Right' and Nationalists Are Falling Apart

Bulgaria's so-called "traditional right", the Union of Democratic Forces and Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, united in the Blue Coalition, might be drifting towards non-existence as their candidate Rumen Hristov failed to even get 2% at the presidential race. Further, strong rifts were noted between Martin Dimitrov's UDF and former PM Ivan Kostov's DSB and their parties in general. Albeit initially planning to run together and organizing common preliminary elections, the two democratic parties failed to fullfledgedly support the winners from those preliminaries. The UDF did not wholeheartedly stand behind DSB's Proshko Proshkov, who was to be the Blues' candidate for Sofia mayor, ending up with 11.5% of the vote. In return, DSB did not formally support UDFs' Hristov for the presidential race.

In its turn, the leading Bulgarian nationalist party, Ataka (which strode on the scene at 2005 parliamentary elections) might also be nearing its end or marginalization, as signaled by an intraparty family scandal erupting right after leader Volen Siderov made an unconvincing 3.6% showing in the presidential race. MEP and Siderov's stepson Dimitar Stoyanov asked for Siderov's resignation – to no avail, but signaling that trust for him is low within the party. To top that, a number of MPs left the Ataka parliamentary group, leaving the number of MPs just at the minimum required (10 MPs).

Political End of an Octopus and Rise of an European Liberal Politician?

Former secret agent, security expert, businessman and alleged organized crime leader Aleksei Petrov failed to become the next star on the Bulgarian political horizon. Back in 2010, Petrov had a high-profile organized crime staged against him (the trial is still on), and was stylized by Borisov and Tsvetanov as the mastermind of Bulgaria's most extensive criminal network, the so-called 'Octopus'. To boot, Petrov has a record of business ties to Borisov in the murky past of the early 1990s. In a situation in which many commentators said he was in a good position to exercise influence, the businessman decided to run for president. However, he failed to garner even 1% of the vote.

By way of contrast, Bulgaria's first EU Commissioner Meglena Kuneva's re-entry into national politics was little short of brilliant. Announcing over the spring that she would run for president and eschewing party support, the liberal politician came out third in the race, with 14% of ballots.

Kuneva made a strong case about being a non-party candidate, criticizing the role of existent Bulgarian political parties as allegedly defending the interests of cliques and oligopolies, and neglecting the rights of citizens. She further called for a more grass-roots role of citizenship and a pro-active stance on the part of voters. An intelligent and balanced speaker, she made the best use of her European image and even managed to go out of the usual bland rhetoric to some incisive and to the point criticisms of the path Bulgaria has been following.

At the second round of the presidential race, Kuneva chose to support neither Plevneliev nor Kalfin. She argued that it would be harmful for Bulgaria to have all powers in the hands of one political party (in this case, GERB), but equally wrong if the presidency is occupied for a third consecutive term by a politician coming from the same party (the Socialists). As it turned out, those who voted for her split even at the second round itself, one third opting not to vote, another voting for Plevneliev and the rest for Kalfin.

In December Kuneva announced the founding of a new "Bulgaria for Citizens" civic movement, which she went to chair. The stated goal of the union is to address the key problems of Bulgaria's politics, society and economy. Although Kuneva seems reluctant to founding a new party, commentators have said the movement is in a good position to morph into a force attracting rightist and liberal voters who have shied away from GERB and the Blue Coalition.

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