/ world today news/ People stopped voting “for” the right and started voting “against” the left
Desislava Pateva’s interview with the sociologist Andrey Raichev
Mr. Raichev, the scales of these parliamentary elections were again tilted in favor of GERB, despite the huge requests to change the status quo. BSP leader Kornelia Ninova reported that support for her party has doubled over the past two years. What tripped her up in this race?
The BSP had brought itself to be a party with waning functions. It was obvious that this was a dying party that was making dying sounds and whining about pensions. Therefore, the people forgot about her, and the right-wing focused on their own things, ceasing to consider the BSP as a particular danger. Cornelia Ninova managed to restore the BSP to magnificent levels, considering that the party had reached the historic barrier of around 1 million votes. But in the course of this recovery, the BSP began to scare certain circles. After the several victories he won – against Mikov, in the presidential elections, and then against the internal party opposition, Kornelia Ninova pushed him with an excessively combative tone, which suddenly poured 200,000-300,000 people into GERB. That’s what happened. This is a partial restoration of the bipolar model, which is extremely disadvantageous for the BSP. The party suffered greatly from this model and was used to running away from it, even very glad that it was destroyed under Tsar Simeon, etc. Unwittingly, he now restored it. They played too actively, occupied too much space, said too sharp things.
A layer of people is forming here who have stopped voting for the right and are voting against the left. Instead of voting for the patriots, for Mareshki, for their reformers, “Yes, Bulgaria” and other such formations, these people decided to cast the safe vote against Ninova. The main characteristic of the bipolar model is that you don’t vote “for” but “against”. You can be very critical of your own, you can say to yourself: “My rubbish is of no use”, but the main thing is that others do not come to power. This is the effect we observed. Therefore, in the last week GERD pulled even higher. No sociologist predicted a 5% distance. The biggest optimists gave a 2% lead for GERB. This is the main effect, and the consequence of it is that the result of the medium and small parties fell sharply compared to the predictions. No one suspected that the Patriots would rise by 300,000 votes. Everyone thought they would win by 400,000, there were even predictions of 500,000 votes. No one suspected that Mareshki would crawl around the barrier and barely jump over it. Everyone gave him at least double support. And he had it only 6 months ago, in the presidential election. But the bipolar model sucked up those voices and dumped them into GERD.
You say that Cornelia Ninova was too aggressive in these elections. Were there other errors that accompanied this election result?
Awakening the party, turning it into a strong and aggressive opposition, which is good in itself, it reached a point where it began to increase support for the opponent, but without itself growing. If she has to draw a longer-term conclusion, it is that she should dose the aggression. Until a moment this aggression was strictly curative, BSP needed it. At one point, she stopped lifting herself and started scaring her opponents, who started to rise against her. It’s a matter of dosage. Since I think there’s an election coming up soon, I guess she’ll need that thought.
That is, you expect to avoid forming a government?
It seems more likely to me that there will be an election than that they will form a government. It will be extremely difficult… With the naked eye, it can be seen that GERB must come to an understanding with the patriots. I see no other options after Cornelia Ninova’s refusal to even negotiate a broad coalition. It is reasonable for the patriots and GERB to form a government, but there are at least three issues that I do not see how they will agree. There are very serious ideological and political differences. The first question is about the electoral system. Borisov clearly sided with Slavi Trifonov, he declared that he would replace her in favor of a majority system. For the Patriots to agree to this is like me agreeing with you to make a deal where I jump out of a tenth floor window. This is their death. They simply won’t have a single MP for the foreseeable future. They cannot agree to this. The second question is even more difficult as it relates to Turkey. Borisov leads a soft policy towards Turkey, tries to smooth out the contradictions, tries to avoid the conflict between Turkey and Europe, in which Bulgaria plays the role of a mediator. Goes to Erdogan, represents him in visa negotiations. Patriots cannot under any circumstances accept a soft policy towards Turkey. I watched an interview with Valery Simeonov, in which he is asked how he sees those ugly scenes at the border, and he answers: “How ugly scenes will they be?! This is the best thing I’ve seen in years. I feel proud”. This is a hard policy. The third question, which is very difficult, is about pensions. The patriots said they wanted the minimum pension to be BGN 300. It was a whole month of propaganda. But, come on, they’re more likely to understand each other here. The last question is foreign policy. It consists in the fact that the European People’s Party does not allow, does not tolerate an alliance with patriotic forces, with nationalists.
This is not the only possible coalition, but if no one wants DPS, only Mareshki and the patriots remain. Mareshki is not enough for either the GERB or the BSP as a coalition partner. Mareshki himself, as far as I understand, is trying to stick to the patriots, that is, to be in a pack. That’s smart of him. His score is much lower than what was expected. He barely crossed the barrier – he has just over 4% support or 12 MPs.
How do you assess the performance of the fragmented parties in the right space? Some analysts note as a phenomenon the great support received by “Yes, Bulgaria”, while others consider as a mistake the refusal of Hristo Ivanov to form a coalition with Radan Kanev, who even resigned due to the poor performance of “New Republic”.
A very, very good result for “Yes, Bulgaria”. It’s a few weeks old party after all. Apparently, Hristo Ivanov has found a formula that will inevitably play a positive role. They almost did not enter the parliament, but in Sofia they are the third political force. This is a very big success. Rejecting a coalition seemed like a mistake, but given his perspective, it may turn out to be the opposite. A gross mistake of Radan Kanev and the Reform Bloc was that they split. And for that they will pay with their heads.
DPS managed to push DOST out of the entrance of parliament, but the coalition of Mestan and Dal has a clear superiority in Turkey, which is evident from the election results. Is this just a result of the agitation by Turkish politicians? What would have happened if DOST had entered the National Assembly?
It’s not just campaigning, it’s organizing. The Turkish state clearly helps DOST. This is something unprecedented in Bulgarian history. The embassy has always tried to influence – with advice, with a levy, but here there was simply an organization created. Turkey succeeded in installing a pro-Turkish party in Macedonia. It is more than important for us not to allow this. In this case, we got away with it, because DOST does not seem to enter with very little – with several tens of thousands of votes. Besides, they would have got them if it weren’t for this resistance at the borders and the aggravation of the voting procedure in Turkey.
As for the relationship with DPS – everyone says that DPS has dealt with DOST. She has not managed anything, because in Turkey the votes are two to one for Mestan, it has always been the other way around. Mestan dealt a significant blow to DPS. If we go so far as to put Ahmed Dogan in a situation where he has to fight two countries, he will lose for sure. He has a hard time fighting with one country, but what about two. A private person cannot handle this. This requires common sense from Bulgarian politicians, it literally requires integration efforts towards the DPS. However, this is not heard. Our politicians are afraid of the electorate. The electorate is very radical, they don’t want to hear about any Dogan. This is a gross mistake of the Bulgarians, but what can we do… On the evening of the elections, I allowed myself to say the sentence that we are the first nation that will perish from stupidity.
#nation #perish #stupidity
