In Bulgarian politics, the expression “the strong of the day” will now have to be taken literally – you are strong today, and tomorrow you fall into the group of weaklings. Some politicians found this out the hard way – like the showman Slavi Trifonov, whose party ITN quickly reached the political peak and just as quickly fell from it. And now a similar decline threatens President Rumen Radev, who only half a year ago was ruling the country as an autocrat.
Hardly anyone expected that Radev could get as much power as he did in the turbulent time between 2021 and 2023. Before that, we were used to considering the president almost a ceremonial figure – an institution with authority but no real powers . Well, that notion turned out to be a huge mistake. The alternating caretaker governments appointed by the head of state have shown that he can run the country almost like a regular prime minister. It was a “reserve constitutional model”, as Hristo Ivanov of the PP-DB successfully put it, which suddenly became necessary when the parliament collapsed under the weight of party feuds, and almost all strands of state power were concentrated in “Dondukov” 2.
Even then it was clear that this would not last long.
It was enough for parliament to issue a regular cabinet, and the structure on which the president’s power rested evaporated like smoke. This is what happened when Kiril Petkov’s government was elected at the end of 2021. Until then, he and his colleagues in the PP were favorites of Radev, but they quickly turned into his opponents because they wanted to rule without considering their patron. However, this cabinet lasted only about half a year, after which it collapsed due to its internal contradictions, and the country was once again taken over by a presidential government.
Such a development option existed even now. The Denkov-Gabriel cabinet is the most fragile and unnatural political construct imaginable. And almost every other day for the last 6 months since he has been in power, he has been hit by a political tremor that makes us wonder how long he will last. And it was clear that if he falls, Radev will again take the helm of the state.
Well, it didn’t happen. For better or for worse, the assembly is holding up. What’s more, he successfully rewrote the Constitution in such a way that the option the president hoped for became almost impossible to happen. Until now, if the parliament failed with the regular government, the head of state dissolved it and appointed a ministerial cabinet, in which he staffed as he pleased. The assembly, however, got clever and reversed this model – the parliament will no longer be dissolved before elections, and the president will choose an acting prime minister from among several senior government positions listed in the Constitution.
Whether this scheme is successful remains to be seen.
In any case, the president will no longer be the deciding factor in executive power. He is replaced by the National Assembly – in other words, the assembly that will in practice lead the interim cabinet, since all potential prime ministers are appointed by the parliament, in which GERB, PP-DB and DPS have a majority. Thus, Radev lost the strongest and most important lever at his disposal. Even if the Denkov-Gabriel cabinet collapses tomorrow, it will not be able to regain the positions it had before.
Meanwhile, Radev began to disappear from public attention. His attempts to return to the center of the political scene failed. Here, the rulers rejected the idea of declaring May 24 a national holiday instead of March 3. This killed in the bud the initiative for “March 3 People’s Movement”, which originated in the presidency. It aimed to unite conservative and nationalist Bulgarians against the assembly, using the change of the holiday as an occasion. Now, however, the head of state and his people will have to think of another project if they want to deal with party building again.
Radev also got lost in the spectacular scandal,
which arose around the removal of the monument to the Soviet army. Here at the head of the “resistance” stood left-wing politicians – Maya Manolova from “Levitsa”, Ivan Takov from BSP-Sofia and others. Even in cases in which he actually took action – for example, by contesting the parliamentary decision to hand over armored vehicles to Ukraine, the battle was fought by “Vazrazhdane” and BSP, who have no intention of sharing their glory with him.
Radev still faces tough battles in defense of his remaining powers and the legacy of his official governments. The PP-DB is gnashing its teeth to deprive him of the opportunity to influence the appointments in the special services. A bill in this direction has been submitted to the parliament and will soon be considered. At the request of the BSP, a parliamentary commission of inquiry was established to investigate the long-term contract with the Turkish gas company Botash, which Radev’s office concluded in January 2023. It is clear that the Positano 20 party, hostile to the president, is about to gave him major headaches.
Thus, Radev finds himself in a rather difficult situation. On the one hand, it is put in a position of circular defense – it is attacked by both the ruling party and the opposition. On the other hand, the levers with which he imposed himself as a factor in the state are being taken away from him one by one. And he doesn’t know what to do. This was evident in his New Year’s address, in which he hurled all kinds of accusations at his opponents, but gave no indication that he had a concrete plan to oppose them. The balance is that the president is being marginalized as a political and state figure, and this may turn out to be one of the most important trends in Bulgarian politics for this year and beyond.
If you want to support independent and quality journalism in “Sega”,
you can donate via PayPal
2024-01-04 01:04:31
#Radev #turned #autocrat #marginal
