/View.info/ The weaknesses of the movement keep him away from power, no matter how much he wants to get back into it
DPS recently celebrated 28 years since its establishment as a political party. The event passed without much fanfare, in the narrow circle of members and sympathizers of the movement. Narrow in the literal sense – after reaching the peak of its electoral power in the 2009 elections with 610 thousand votes, in the early vote last year Zorlem managed to bring it to 315 thousand – almost as much as the nationalist bloc “United Patriots” hated by the Dogan Party (OP). The parliamentary group has shrunk to 25 MPs.
This apparently does not affect the self-confidence of party bigwigs. “The establishment of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms 28 years ago is one of the most significant moments in modern Bulgarian history… Today DPS is a significant political factor not only in Bulgaria – our party is a respected liberal partner whose voice is heard throughout Europe “, boasted Ilhan Kyuchuk, MEP and head of the DPS Komsomol. His pompous tone is familiar to the people of the movement, who are aware that DPS remains one of the most significant factors in Bulgarian politics, regardless of its electoral decline in recent years. But it still cannot hide the feeling of insecurity that reigns in the ranks of the party. And not so much because of declining voters – this is a trend that covers all major political forces with more than a few years of history behind them. And because of the uncertainty of where to go in the future.
Because DPS is at a crossroads. The movement must look for new ways to rule, and it does not know what.
He needs to find new allies, but he doesn’t know where.
He must win the battle with his rivals for the Turkish-Muslim vote, which is far from over, no matter how much his sympathetic sociologists claim otherwise.
And the return to management remains, at least in the near future, a mission impossible. There are not likely to be new early elections not only until the end of the Bulgarian EU presidency, but also until the local vote in 2019, which many expect to show what the real balance of power on the political scene is. Despite the frequent contradictions in the ruling coalition of GERB and OP, as well as the accompanying predictions of its recent disintegration, it does not seem at all that Boyko Borisov’s people and the nationalists have intensified towards separation. The gestures of attention that the Prime Minister makes from time to time to the DPS (such as his appeal to patriots to measure their talk against the movement) look more like a friendly wink and an attempt not to create unnecessary problems with minorities than a signal “with I’m you, I’m waiting for you”.
Borisov is well aware that he will commit political suicide if he goes openly side by side with the DPS, after years of consistently saying that he will never form an alliance with the parties behind the Oresharski cabinet. That is why the efforts of the Dogan party to create a rift between GERB and OP have not yielded any particular results for now – no matter how much it tries to turn this coalition into a pan-European problem by alerting all possible international liberal forums and European institutions about the risks of the presence of “fascists” in the government .
And in the DPS they seem quite aware of their weak position. This is evident in Ahmed Dogan’s pre-Christmas message to the party (which he did not fail to note with vain satisfaction that “causes not only interest, but also strong anticipation”, as it has become “an informal visionary forum of the DPS”). First, the honorary chairman
effectively acknowledged the party’s poor performance in the election
with the words that “2017 was not one of the best for DPS”. Second, it made it clear that the opposition in general and the movement in particular are unable to offer a workable alternative to the current government if the no-confidence vote initiated by the BSP and supported by the DPS somehow succeeds. “Is there a party that is ready to govern the country after possible early elections? My judgment is that there is no such political force from the opposition that can take the responsibility of governing the country as of today. So what do we do? If the goal is to ‘become to sit down’ is not worth the effort to put our common home to the test,” Dogan pointed out. And he predicted that with such a development “we will be totally ruined”, and a new government would last no more than a few months.
Many saw in his word
an informal promise that the DPS will support the “Borisov 3” cabinet.
There is reason to think so, especially since the prime minister days earlier directly appealed to Dogan to talk to his people, as a vote of no confidence in January could bring down the state. On the other hand, however, what Dogan said seems like a completely correct assessment of the weak position of his party at the moment, and in the near future. It’s no coincidence that he only talks about the past year, avoiding any specifics about how things might play out in the coming months (though he touts his message as “visionary”). And he contented himself with the party’s usual warnings that the patriots in power put Bulgarian democracy at risk.
This caution is also dictated by another weakness of the DPS – the lack of a permanent political partner. For many years, the movement has been playing with someone else by its side – first the NDSV, then the BSP. Sticking to a purely Bulgarian party helps it become more acceptable to a wider segment of the country’s overall electorate.
But now there is no one.
Since Kornelia Ninova became the head of the centenary, the relationship with the socialists became extremely loose and uncertain. The social leader well learned the lesson of his predecessors, who were scalded by the insidiousness of the DPS. And when he smelled the opportunity to seize power last year, he immediately announced: “We were wrong twice (with DPS – note), there won’t be a third time”. He even said that the patriots were the most suitable partner for the BSP. Her attitude did not change when she found herself together with DPS in opposition after the early elections. “Borisov was worried about the tension in the country, the vote of no confidence for corruption and the rift with the patriots and asked Mr. Dogan for help. And he got it. Dogan supports Borisov,” Ninova said after the speech of the honorary chairman. And he attacked the government without DPS, submitting the vote only with the signatures of BSP MPs. Media friendly to the movement announced that Dogan had isolated the BSP. The reverse is equally true – Ninova has shown that she can leave DPS alone without worry. After Positano’s 20 are so unresponsive, who is left for DPS to turn to for a union? There is no answer.
The most critical issue facing the movement is the upcoming local elections. Protecting its “bastions” in places remains a major task, especially given the competition that the DOST and NPSD represent. There have recently been comments that the rivals have all but disappeared from the political scene, which Borissov helped to do by mediating between Dogan and Turkish President Recep Erdogan to restore their broken relationship. Let’s recall the numbers. In the early vote last year, “DOST Unity” (Lyutvi Mestan and Kasim Dal) received 100 thousand votes in our country and in Turkey. However circumstances have changed so far (if they have changed at all), so many voters will not evaporate to one. As for reconciliation with Ankara, it is difficult to understand whether there is anything similar from Dogan’s cursory comment that DPS “we are obliged to produce good neighborly relations with the Republic of Turkey and help it in its dialogue with the EU”. In fact, one can even detect some irritation at the apparently continued foreign interference in his words that “external abortion of analogous processes of division and unification is not healthy for our voters.”
In general, the questions with open answers before the DPS are not one and two. And so far the movement does not give the impression that it is capable of solving them. Rather, he cautiously steps left and right as he tries to find the new line to follow. And while he longs to get back into power, his weaknesses keep him away from it.
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