Status: 04/02/2023 11:51 a.m
In 2022, Bulgaria briefly had a head of government in Kiril Petkov, whom people trusted to be truly capable of fighting corruption. His coalition quickly fell apart, now he’s trying again.
June 22 last year was a bitter evening for then Prime Minister Kiril Petkov. He was overthrown by a vote of no confidence in Parliament – with a very close result.
The 42-year-old was the hope of many Bulgarians, a smart Bulgarian-Canadian businessman with a Harvard degree, head of the new anti-corruption party “We will continue the change”. At the time he commented on his fall with emotional words: “We promise we will continue to fight to take our country back. One day we will have a Bulgaria without backroom politics, without a mafia. A normal, successful European country.”
The process has shown how difficult it is for Bulgaria to overcome the old system of Boyko Borissov and his GERB party, which is considered corrupt. Petkov’s then four-party coalition broke up after only seven and a half months, mainly because of TV entertainer Slavi Trifonov’s party “There is such a people”.
“Complex coalition of four parties”
In the end it was all about money, says Boris Popivanov, a lecturer in political science at the University of Sofia: “It was a very complex coalition of four parties, each with a different agenda.” Petkov has started to stop corruption in various institutions. “When he wanted to attack the Ministry for Regional Development and Construction, the governing coalition broke up,” said Popivanov.
The ministry was under the control of the party of TV entertainer Trifonov and had been working with road construction companies since Borisov’s time, which, according to Pipanov, charged high bills and then often did not build anything at all. “Trifonov’s party wanted to continue this practice, they saw the Ministry of Infrastructure as an opportunity to participate in billions in cash flows.”
Trifonow is considered to have no chance
Trifonov is meanwhile down with the Bulgarian voters. The polls see his party below the four percent hurdle. But the surveys also see Petkow in a difficult starting position. His new, expanded anti-corruption alliance consisting of the parties “We are continuing the change” and “Democratic Bulgaria” is therefore on a par with Borisov’s GERB at around 25 percent each. The remainder of the votes are mainly divided between pro-Russian socialists and nationalists and the “Movement for Rights and Freedoms” (DPS), which primarily campaigns for the rights of the Turkish minority.
Nevertheless, Petkov is optimistic that he will be able to lead a new minority government. “We are absolutely sure that we will get the best result in this election. And then we offer a positive agenda: economic growth, innovation, social reforms, joining the Schengen area and the eurozone. And then there are the other groups of Parliament and it will be difficult for them to refuse a mandate to such a government.”
However, that is exactly what happened after the most recent election last fall. Petkov’s party, as the second-largest faction, did not get its government mandate through. Nobody wanted to govern with the strongest faction, Borisov’s GERB.
support of EPP
In the final of the election campaign, GERB again received support from the conservative EPP party family in the European Parliament, to which GERB itself also belongs. The EPP chairman, the CSU politician Manfred Weber, campaigned for the party at a GERB election campaign event in Varna on Thursday: “During the time when GERB governed with Boyko Borissow, we had stability. Since then we are no longer in the government we have instability, inflation and insecurity. Bulgaria needs stability again – and that’s why GERB has to be elected.”
What Weber failed to mention: The GERB government was voted out in 2021 after mass protests in several Bulgarian cities. The demonstrators complained that corruption had reached an intolerable level. Under GERB, Bulgaria became the poorest country in the EU with the highest population inequality.