Bulgaria Political Briefing: Splitting and Fragmentation in the Bulgarian Political Life Evgeniy Kandilarov

Home , Boyko Borisov, Parliamentary leader, Republicans for Bulgaria, Tsvetan Tsvetanov

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 33, No. 1 (BG)

October 2020

Bulgaria political briefing: Splitting and Fragmentation in the Bulgarian Political Life Evgeniy Kandilarov

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Splitting and Fragmentation in the Bulgarian Political Life

Leaving aside the civil protests against the Bulgarian government and the country's chief prosecutor, which have been going on for more than three months now, during the last month in the Bulgarian political life there have been tendencies of splitting of the political space both among the members and supporters of the ruling right-wing party GERB, and within the largest opposition left wing party - the Bulgarian Socialist Party. These tendencies are clearly visible through two main political events.

The former deputy chairman of the ruling party creates a new political entity, breaking away from GERB members and voters The first remarkable event is the establishment of a new political party, headed by the former closest and most trusted person of the leader of the GERB (Boyko Borisov) and deputy chairman of the party - Tsvetan Tsvetanov. Until 2009 he was a chairman of the GERB party. On 8 July 2009, in the wake of the 2009 parliamentary election won by his party, he was specified by de facto party leader Boyko Borisov as future Minister of the Interior. After that he was a parliamentary leader of Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s GERB party and Interior Minister in the first of Borissov’s three governments. Tzvetanov's image was first tainted in 2011 when media stories appeared of him owning several expensive properties in the capital city. An audit by the Tax Administration revealed he owns 6 apartments, something which no person in the public administration can easily afford. Tzvetan Tzvetanov offered unconvincing explanations of how he acquired six apartments in Sofia after entering politics in 2006, claiming they were bought by his mother-in-law. The tax case was re-opened in June 2013 after new evidence emerged that two of the apartments may have been given to him as a present in exchange for a lucrative government contract. Tsvetanov resigned from all leadership posts in GERB in May 2019 after an earlier announcement by the anti-corruption commission that he was being investigated in connection with an alleged cut-price apartment deal. In September 2019, he founded the Euro-Atlantic Security Center, an NGO working on key issues in the security sector. Earlier in June 2020, Tsvetanov resigned his membership of GERB and said that he had decided to go ahead with founding his own political party after getting huge backing from his supporters for his decision to leave Borissov’s party. Tsvetanov said that during his meetings with people from the party who had supported GERB since 2006, he had the impression they no longer trusted the party.

Steadily, Tsvetanov became one of the critics of the GERB government claiming that “There is inconsistency and chaos in the government”. According to him legislative changes were being made that were not fit for purpose. Finally on August 27th the former second most important person in GERB and former Vice-Chairman of the party organized a founding meeting of a new political party called "Republicans for Bulgaria". The new party is announced to be a centre-right and is going to run for the next parliamentary elections. According to Tsvetanov, Republicans for Bulgaria wants Bulgaria on a Euro-Atlantic path. In some media interviews, Tsvetanov predicted that his new political project would receive at least 500,000 votes in the next parliamentary elections, same as GERB. The new political party is seen as part of the European People's Party, but the fact that they will be there with Boyko Borissov's formation does not mean that there can be any talk of closeness between them, said Tsvetanov, who noted that among the EPP members are also other entities that are not together with the ruling party. Tsvetanov also announced that he sees "Democratic Bulgaria", one of the main right wing opposition of the current government, as a partner of his future Republicans for Bulgaria party, as both are close in their demand for the rule of law and judicial reform. However, Tsvetanov rebuked his former party members from GERB, as according to him there is pressure exerted on people not to join the new project of the former Interior Minister During the founding meeting of the Republicans for Bulgaria Pavel Vulnev, a Chicago- based Bulgarian business person and former owner of the now-defunct BiT television station, was elected as deputy leader of the party. The party said that Vulnev’s election showed that one of the priorities of Republicans for Bulgaria will be to care for Bulgarians abroad and to guarantee their right to participate in elections via electronic voting. Tsvetanov also called for early parliamentary elections and criticized the current government, which he said lacked a clear direction of development. In an implicit criticism of Borissov, he said that Republicans for Bulgaria would not be “leader’s party” but its decisions would be taken on a consultative basis. He said that it was possible that members of his party would be subject to “repression” and promised to support them. Centre-right and right-wing political formations that shared the values of Republicans for Bulgaria were seen as the party’s potential partners. Tsvetanov’s party also envisages empowering diversity in Bulgaria and bringing together the country’s different ethnic groups, to end dispute among them and ensure their active participation in politics. The main emphases of the future party’s programme are education, the judiciary, culture, small and medium-sized businesses, and e-government. A few days ago in an interview before the Bulgarian National Television Tsvetan Tsvetanov said that Boyko Borissov was making the GERB hostage to the survival of his cabinet.

Whether the new political formation of the former closest person to Boyko Borissov and deputy chairman of his party will be able to win a seat in the next parliament remains to be seen. One thing is for sure, however, that the emergence of a new political entity in the right- wing political space shows a decrease of the confidence in the ruling party among its own electorate, which is likely to be severely divided in the next election since part of it is going to vote for the Tsvetanov’s Republicans for Bulgaria.

Crisis in the Bulgarian Socialist Party and split in its parliamentary group Serious disintegration processes are also observed among the left political space. Indicative of this is what is happening within the Bulgarian Socialist Party, in which there has long been a strong internal party opposition against the current party leader Kornelia Ninova. Meanwhile on September 12th Kornelia Ninova has won re-election as leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, with 81.5 per cent of the vote among party members. This was the first direct election for chairperson of the Party with the votes of all party members. Until that time the leader of the party has being elected by the leadership body. Ninova, first elected BSP leader in 2016, defeated three other candidates – BSP deputy leader Kiril Dobrev and MPs Valeri Zhablyanov and Krassimir Yankov. This was followed by an election of a National Council of the Party in which prominent members of the “internal opposition” to Ninova fail to win seats. One of Ninova’s critics, former long-time BSP leader and current leader of the Party of European Socialists, Sergei Stanishev, responded to the result by saying that the BSP had become a “leader’s party” and the National Council had been reduced to a “rubber stamp”. Soon after that Six members of Parliament have been quitted the parliamentary group of the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party. The six include two of Ninova’s defeated rivals in the party leadership election, Krassimir Yankov and Valeri Zhablyanov. The others are Nikolai Ivanov, Lalo Kirilov, Georgi Andreev and Dimitar Stoyanov. All except Zhablyanov also resigned from their membership of the BSP. Yankov stressed that they remain socialists and will complete their mandate as independent MPs. Zhablyanov added that the BSP was moving in the opposite direction, unrecognizable to the real socialists. He said also that the BSP is moving away from its program. According to Zhablyanov, the party is going firmly to the right- wing with this chairman and pointed out that the ideological discussion among the party members is limited. According to him, there is a danger of the BSP returning in the most unpleasant years for the party, carrying out a purge against people who have different views and are critical of the current leadership and way of governing the party. Valeri Zhablyanov added also that the party's idea is chaotic populism and there is no trace of a constructive idea

3 for governing Bulgaria. Despite his will to leave the Parliementary group of the BSP the Former Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly clarified that he remains a member of the BSP. Similar to his opinion regarding the BSP leadership were the critical comments of Krasimir Yankov who underlined that BSP is governed with right-wing views. According to him In Kornelia Ninova's party, the leadership does not consist of socialists and the party is no longer guided by socialist ideas. According to Yankov, most of the people left in the leadership are those driven only by career motives. Undoubtedly, the sharp criticism of the leadership of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the split of the party's parliamentary group are signs of a serious internal party political crisis of confidence, which could lead to a decrease in the number of voters for the party in the next parliamentary elections or a scattering of votes to other political formations in the left political space. This threatens to reduce the opposition strength of the BSP in the next parliament and, in general, to permanently weaken the presence and influence of left-wing political ideas in the future parliament of the country. The two specific cases of splitting and fragmentation of both the right and the left political space show crisis processes related to serious loss of confidence on the one hand and an inability to consolidate and to maintain a convincing political presence on the part of the existing main political subjects in Bulgaria - the ruling party GERB and the largest opposition party - BSP.