The new government looks unlikely to last long

The Economist

Every day for nearly three weeks, tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets of Sofia, Varna, Burgas and other Bulgarian cities. In Sofia, the capital, the demonstrators meet at 6.30pm in Independence Square and then make their way past the parliament, the Eagles’ Bridge and the National Palace of Culture. They call for more transparency, less corruption, an effective fight against organised crime and an end to the rule of local oligarchs.

The protests are different from previous episodes of civil unrest since the end of communism, which have mostly featured the poor protesting about utility bills or the minimum wage. Recent marches have drawn in members of the young, educated middle class who use Facebook and Twitter and turn up with strollers and bicycles. A group of about 60 intellectuals, lawyers, human-rights activists and journalists joined in by posting an online “charter for disbanding the plutocratic model of the Bulgarian state”. Tihomir Bezlov of the Centre for the Study of Democracy in Sofia says that the atmosphere reminds him of the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia more than 20 years ago.

The demonstrations began as a response to the nomination of Delyan Peevski, a 32-year-old media mogul, as head of the powerful national security agency. Mr Peevski had been sacked from a previous Socialist-led government and prosecuted on corruption and extortion charges of which he was eventually cleared. He does not directly own any companies (his mother is the official head of a vast business empire) but he is widely known to be in control of firms, including high-circulation newspapers, popular television channels and news websites. Mr Peevski is a Bulgarian Vicar of Bray: his media outlets have a habit of changing their tone according to who is in power.

As the focus of the protesters widened from a government appointment to calls for democracy and the rule of law, Plamen Oresharski, the prime minister, performed a U-turn. He admitted that the appointment of Mr Peevski had been a mistake. Parliament then reversed it. In a further attempt to placate the public, Mr Oresharski also introduced a series of increases in public spending, as well as measures to reduce utility bills.

Not satisfied, the protesters are calling for the resignation of the entire government and changes to the electoral law that would allow smaller parties to enter parliament. In the election on May 12th, only four parties managed to get the 4% of votes required to win a seat. The protesters have wide backing: according to Alpha Research, a pollster, more than 80% of Bulgarians say they support them.

Rumyana Kolarova, a political scientist at the University of Sofia, predicts the protests will lead to early elections, if not in autumn then in spring when elections for the European Parliament are due. The question is whether protesters will wait until then. “The protests might turn violent,” warns Yavor Siderov, a journalist in Sofia. The police have so far been restrained, but some fear they could be provoked.

The trouble is that most Bulgarians seem fed up with the entire political class, including both the discredited centre-right GERB party of Boyko Borisov, the previous prime minister, who resigned in the wake of poverty protests earlier this year, and today’s Socialist-led cabinet. New elections will not solve this. Bulgaria’s best hope is a technocratic government that reforms the judiciary, changes the electoral code, fights organised crime and corruption, and ends the opaque dealings of the government so that young, untainted and talented people find it attractive to enter politics.

Mr Oresharski seems to be going in the opposite direction. He had to fire his new deputy interior minister within hours of his appointment, because he is alleged to have past links with organised crime, and he had to withdraw the nomination as cabinet minister of Kalin Tiholov, due to Mr Tiholov’s involvement in a construction-industry scandal. “Noresharski! Noligarchy!” proclaim the protesters’ banners. A recent poll showed that two-thirds of them say they will continue to take to the streets daily until the government falls.

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