How many people still remember the NDSV? The party, founded by Simeon of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, erupted like a volcano on the political scene before 2001, when it defeated Ivan Kostov’s UDS in the parliamentary elections, gaining the support of almost 2 million voters. NDSV ruled the country for the next 8 years in coalition governments – first with DPS, and then with the movement and BSP. The result – in the elections in 2009, the voters of the “tsar’s party” melted down to 127 thousand, and in the last parliamentary vote in April of this year were less than 7 thousand.
This decline is a good lesson for politicians. Especially given that political forces are “wasting” more and more quickly in the last few years.
Voters no longer hesitate to dump parties immediately,
that have disappointed them and to look for alternatives. And as elections have become more frequent, people have the opportunity to regularly shift their vote from one formation to another, and massively so. And this leads some parties to a rapid collapse in results – as happened with ITN, whose electorate decreased 6 times (!) from 2021 to 2023.
One would expect such trends to alarm political forces. Especially those who have weak party structures in the country, which makes it extremely difficult to maintain a large and stable electorate. PP-DBs fall precisely into this category. This was clearly seen in the local elections at the end of 2023, when the right won mayors in only half a dozen municipalities in the country. True, they won in Sofia and Varna, but that only proved why they are called “urban right”. And the rest of the country fell into the hands of GERB, BSP and DPS.
To overcome such a disadvantage, a political force needs a long-term strategy to win elections. PP-DB doesn’t seem to have one. The right is not making any special efforts to expand its influence in the country, but has clutched at straws like a drowning man for the assembly with GERB and DPS. And that’s exactly what sets her up
in great danger of failing completely
over the next few years.
And her efforts to preserve the assembly do not help to change this situation at all. Here, for example, is PP-DB’s support for Desislava Atanasova’s candidacy for constitutional judge. It was a frankly stupid move that can only disgust voters on the right. Atanasova has been a politician from GERB for 15 years. We have watched her in Parliament long enough to know that she does not have the necessary professional qualities for an elite institution like the Constitutional Court. Until recently, this was a problem of Boyko Borisov, who raised it. However, the PP-DB made it their own problem when their leaders signed the nomination of Atanasova – together with Borisov and the candidate leader of the DPS Delyan Peevski!
On top of everything, the right allowed the leaders of GERB and DPS to sign up under their own candidacy for constitutional judge – Borislav Belazelkov. So what was that about? It was not enough for them to compromise themselves by standing behind Atanasova, but they also had to tarnish their candidate’s reputation by lining up behind him the politicians who, until recently, were seen as the faces of the status quo. And all this in the name of preserving the assembly – sorry, of dialogue and consensus!
However, it seems that
PP and DB are too flattered to look for small gains
from the alliance with their yesterday’s enemies to think about the long-term consequences. Now, along with the rotation of power, the election of the next Speaker of the National Assembly is coming. The right-wing parties are quietly fighting over who should be nominated – whether Nikola Minchev (PP) or Atanasov Atanasov (DB). Whoever it is, must get the support of at least GERB to take the post. And given the specifics of the assembly, where everyone does everything together, the DPS will also be involved in the selection.
What comes out? That the former opponents of the right – the “parties of the status quo”, as they were called, will have the final say on who should go to the important and authoritative post. How did it happen that GERB and DPS make such decisions about PP-DB? Well, they cooked them. The right knows it, but doesn’t seem to take it to heart (even when GERD blackmails them with disassembly to get what it wants). Why? Are they so confident that they can retain the loyalty of their sympathizers after testing it so often and so hard?
And the idea of a coalition agreement with GERB is already in the air. Coincidentally or not, it came from the preparer for
Speaker of the Parliament Atanas Atanasov
Since the autumn of last year, he has been knocking on the doors of Borisov and Peevski in order to get their approval for the roles he wanted in the special services. They do not give it to him, but he continues to wait for it, and already for the votes of their deputies to head the National Assembly. And in the meantime, he says that there is nothing wrong with writing the “actual coalition” on paper, as he calls the assembly. So the right has softened so much to the notion of cooperation with the status quo that coalition no longer seems like a dirty word to them, as before. They don’t even shy away from accepting greetings from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, along with Borisov and Peevski, who were previously accused of being pro-Kremlin.
However, right-wing voters are neither deaf nor blind nor stupid. And this whole series of deals (compromise has become a weak word) with the politicians we were supposed to remove, rip and replace, disgusts them more and more. They see how firmly the right is merging with the status quo and find it increasingly difficult to swallow this in the name of Euro-Atlantic orientation and political stability. At the upcoming European elections, we will find out how far PP-DB has been pushed back by its supporters. And how close they are to the fate of the collapsed NDSV.
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2024-01-18 15:04:43
#headed #disaster
