To speak of an “election winner” with a turnout of just 38 percent is, on the one hand, quite an exaggeration. On the other hand, the conservative Gerb party with its leader Boyko Borissow became the strongest party in Bulgaria in the parliamentary elections on Sunday with 25 percent; Borisov could therefore certainly call himself the winner of the poorly attended vote.
But it’s a sad victory. And not just because fewer and fewer Bulgarians are interested in going to an election, the only consequence of which is that they may have to vote again a few months later: this parliamentary election was the fourth in two years, after the Last winter, after mass protests and two unsuccessful attempts in 2021, a reform government was formed, but it was overthrown again in June 2022.
So now, once again, there were early elections, and Borisov, the old fox, did comparatively well. Election researchers explain this by saying that the population identifies him as a personally dubious but politically experienced player in the chaos of Bulgarian politics. And as someone who is regularly involved in corruption scandals and maintains good relations with the mafia, but has ensured a certain stability in his three terms of office over the past decade.
However, since no other party wants to form a coalition with Borisov’s Gerb party, he will presumably not be able to form a government. Unless the 63-year-old frees up the top spot for a more serious party leadership and acts from the background. Or he governs with a kind of expert cabinet and changing majorities. If that doesn’t work, there could be another election in three or four months, and by then President Rumen Radev will set up an interim government again, as he did recently.
Anyone who finds all of this volatile and dangerous is in good company: political scientist Vessela Cherneva warns that the ongoing uncertainty “is undermining parliamentary democracy in Bulgaria and could shift the balance of power further in the direction of the pro-Russian President Radev.”
In any case, the current scenario is one that Boyko Borissov has known for a long time: in February 2021, the former karate fighter and security chief of former head of state and Communist Party Todor Zhivkov, who is said to have earned his money for a while with cigarette smuggling, was also with him won most of the votes for his party, but found no government partner. His time as someone who regularly had to go and then kept coming back seemed to be over for good a year ago. The anger in civil society over wiretapping scandals, guns and gold bars in his bedside drawer and endless reports of his collaboration with oligarchs and organized crime had been too great.
Borisov’s fortunes in the EU had also turned: he and his party had been protected by the conservatives in the European Parliament, despite constant complaints about state corruption and a lack of rule of law in the EU Commission’s annual progress reports. But after the departure of the German Chancellor, who had protected Borissov as a reliable cantonist without her own European agenda, he also lacked the tailwind from Brussels back home in Sofia.
And now he’s back after all, because the weakness of his opponents and the fragmented party system played into his hands. Should he be able to form the government in the end, the controversial veteran would face a Herculean task: the reform government that fell in June had severed all ties to Moscow. Now it needs new gas suppliers – and a new political stability in extremely unstable times.