The general elections in Bulgaria are over. But the circus just begins.
Circus, not crisis.
The turnout was just above 50%. In comparison, in 2009 it was 60%. The decrease is actually surprising, because of the weekly protests in the last few months. They made me believe that our civil society is getting more active than I have ever seen it. This appeared to be just an illusion and the fact that Bristol, Cardiff and Bath together couldn’t get 100 registration forms from their Bulgarian residents that would have led to the creation of a polling station in Bristol, should have been a good sign, even before the actual elections. As a matter of fact there are 184 Bulgarians only in Bristol (as the answer of my latest FOI request revealed) and 100 forms from the three cities are not that impossible.
The results themselves show that GERB, the Bulgarian Socialists Party (BSP), DPS (the party of the Turkish minority) and Ataka (the Bulgarian equivalent of UKIP) have made it above the 4% barrier and will have their MPs. If we go back to 2009, we will see that GERB had 20% more than BSP (who were part of a coalition at the time) and managed to form its own government. This time none of the parties has above 50%, so we should witness a coalition. Or new elections.
Apart from the low turnout, what I don’t understand is how people have such a short memory and although they made Boyko Borisov and GERB resign just a couple of months ago, they still voted for them. However, this proves once again that the PR of the party works and they really managed to use their resignation as a way to win new voters. Maybe not as many, as they wished, but have they not resigned their results would have been even lower.
The other interesting point that follows from the election results is that 25% of the votes went to different small parties that couldn’t go above 4%. Probably this is to show how dissatisfied these 25% are with the “mainstream” parties.
The results also led to the resignations of many of the leaders of the losing political parties.
What follows now?
After the exact results are published, negotiations will begin. GERB and BSP are the two parties with most voters, but it’s not likely that they will make a coalition together. The most credible scenario is a coalition between either BSP, DPS and Ataka; or just BSP and DPS, depending on the exact numbers of MPs. DPS and Ataka together sounds strange enough, having in mind that the first party represents the ethnic Turkish minority and the second are nationalists. However, the leader of Ataka seems to have somehow accepted in the night of the elections that they might have to work together.
If no coalition is formed, we will have new elections. How different will the results be, probably depends only on the number of underhand tactics that the parties will use. But what I forecast are some more months of circus performances. And if this is the case, don’t think that I am a fortune-teller, because (as UKIP might put it) it’s just “common sense”.
*Although there is a chance that it might not make it into the ruling coalition.
tea story box 