2024-08-18 22:13:03
A high voter turnout or a new political force are among the possible options that could halt the streak of failed mandates to form a government. This was commented by political scientists Ivan Nachev and Boris Popivanov.
The upcoming early vote will be the sixth after the regular parliamentary election on April 4, 2021. The last early election was on June 9 this year. It has reached this point after no agreement was reached on the formation of a cabinet and from the third attempt. Since April 4, 2021, President Rumen Radev has handed over 21 mandates, with two of them establishing a regular government.
With a high voter turnout, only parties with significant influence in society will receive political representation in the National Assembly, commented Ivan Nachev to BTA. According to him, at the moment it does not seem likely that a party will get a majority that would guarantee it the formation of an independent government.
“Since 2001, the tendency in the Bulgarian parliament is to form coalition governments, and it is becoming more and more fragmented, which means that either there must be a broad coalition, or the largest parties agree to govern together, as in the previous National Assembly. This trend is accompanied by another feature – in every new parliament, a political party that is absolutely new to our political life enters,” Nachev points out.
According to him, the low voter turnout allows any political adventurer to get representation in the National Assembly.
The way out of the situation can only be political, believes Boris Popivanov. Or to reach such a distribution of the parties in the parliament, where the main formations decide that the ratio between them allows them to govern mutually beneficially, and not one feels hostage to the other. Or for a new political force to appear, which with a great result “will blow away” the others and form a government, he explained.
According to Popivanov, the entire political debate is shifting to official offices, not regular ones. There has never been so much debate over who will be in the next cabinet. The parties seem to think that it will be much more profitable for them to secure the same positions, but unofficially in the cabinet through their ministers. This is extremely vicious, because it kills confidence in the main mechanism of democracy – elections, commented Popivanov.
Sooner or later, a new big party will appear, politics cannot tolerate a vacuum, believes Boris Popivanov.
Parties need change
The political culture of the parties must be changed, believes Ivan Nachev. “They must approach the interests of Bulgarian society with responsibility and realize that political opposition after the elections does not lead to results. The main task of the people’s representatives is to create laws for the benefit of society and to elect a government that solves society’s problems,” explained Nachev. If the next parliament is fragmented again, as it seems at the moment, only a change in the behavior of the party leaders can lead to a successful outcome, he added.
The change in the political culture means not only that the parties realize their responsibility, but also their behavior, noted Ivan Nachev. Emphasis must be placed on political education within the parties, as well as on responsibility when arranging the lists, so that responsible people can be elected to the National Assembly, explained Nachev. Consensus and compromise must be sought. This means that in order to have a government, the first holder of the mandate is responsible for conducting the negotiations in such a way that all participants can make compromises, give up some of their demands in the name of forming a government, the political scientist pointed out.
The parties only think about whether their voters will accept a given coalition, instead of thinking that if a government is formed that has a slightly longer-term horizon, creates some program – sooner or later it will pay off for them, commented Boris Popivanov. Many more voters who did not support them now will stand behind them in the future, because they will see that for a country to have a future, it must have four-year horizons ahead, he believes.
Is there a need to change the electoral system?
There are possibilities, of course, to facilitate the formation of a new government, Popivanov noted. Some of them have already been suggested publicly – the creation of artificial bonuses for the first political power, as in Greece, to receive a certain number of MPs bonus. However, according to him, most of the parties will not accept such changes.
A change in the electoral system will not solve the problem of the impossibility of fulfilling the mandates, but will deepen it, believes Ivan Nachev.
The procedure with the three mandates is an extremely well thought out one and corresponds to the world constitutional practice, pointed out Boris Popivanov. The first two mandates belong to the first two main forces, which always have the best chance of gathering a majority around them, and the third is a crisis, which gives the opportunity to look for different options that will unite parties around this last chance, he explained.
This worked for more than 30 years, but now it has stopped because the main political forces can never find a mutually beneficial option in which they can rule together without feeling like they are ruling on the backs of others, Popivanov said.
The caretaker cabinet was always something extraordinary, when there were new elections, the parties felt obliged to look for an option for a new government – that was the norm. Because office offices have become the new normal, this desire to look for such an option is also decreasing, Popivanov believes.
Seventh parliamentary elections in three years
In the last three years, Bulgaria has twice had a regular government, but neither of them served a full term, according to information from the “Reference” department of BTA.
On December 10, 2021, the co-chairs of “We continue the change” Kiril Petkov and Asen Vassilev signed the coalition agreement with each of the remaining three formations in the coalition – “Democratic Bulgaria”, “BSP for Bulgaria” and “There is such a people”. The document – Agreement for the joint management of Bulgaria in the period 2021 – 2025. On June 22, 2022, the National Assembly voted a vote of no confidence in the government of Kiril Petkov. The mandate of Kiril Petkov’s government is from December 13, 2021 to August 2, 2022.
On June 5, 2023, Nikolay Denkov returned to the president a completed mandate with the structure and personal composition of the cabinet, and in it the deputy prime minister and foreign minister is Maria Gabriel, who, according to a preliminary agreement between GERB-SDS and PP-DB for the so-called ” rotation”, after 9 months he had to replace Nikolay Denkov as Prime Minister. On March 5, 2024, Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov resigned from the government, and a day later it was unanimously voted by the National Assembly. This is also the first step in the imagined “rotation”. The mandate of the government of Nikolay Denkov is from June 6, 2023 to April 9, 2024.