Elections #7: The only campaign is the parallel state one

Парламент - парламентарно заседание - Делян Пеевски - портрет

Elections #7: The only campaign is the parallel state one

Parties are engaged in lackluster, almost absent electioneering, while the only real confrontation is between the two MRFs

Парламент - парламентарно заседание - Делян Пеевски - портрет

© Anton Chalakov


wWith less than two weeks left before the next early parliamentary elections - the seventh in three years - Bulgarians would be excused for thinking most parties have forgotten about them. Apart from the usual roadside panels with well-known faces and uninspired, repetitive slogans, the public rallies and TV debates are fewer than ever even by the standards of our domestic politics. Even more depressingly, most leaders expect another inconclusive result, which is likely to lead to yet another early election.

The only "real" campaign seems to be driven by the civil war within the MRF. The two factions of the movement are those loyal to the honorary chairman Ahmed Dogan, who are under the banner of the newly created Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF, or MRF-Dogan for clarity's sake) and those who stayed with the formal co-chairman of the party, sanctioned mogul Delyan Peevski. His MRF - New Beginning (or MRF-Peevski) seems to be the most active political organization at the moment.

And it does not confine its campaigning efforts to door-to-door canvassing. Instead, it appears that Peevski has begun pulling strings at various levels in the state and local administration, law enforcement and judiciary in order to pressure his former allies. Unfortunately, this seems to be the most active part of the campaign and nobody in the state or the other parties appears to know how to stop it.

The official picture

At first glance, the election picture two weeks before the vote is more or less straightforward - GERB continues to lead with around 24% of the vote of those who have declared they are certain about their choice - very similar to their results last time around.

Second place, which will be secured with around 14% of all votes according to the latest Alpha Research poll, is between the radicals from Vazrazhdane and the liberals from WCC-DB. While, for the time being, the latter seem to have the upper hand, the 0.2% difference is too small to be statistically meaningful, and the final result could go either way.

This might only matter because, if Vazrazhdane wins second place, they will probably be put in a position in which they would have to attempt to form a government (in the likely case that GERB once again fails to form a cabinet with the first mandate). If this happens, we will get the chance to observe for the first time how Kostadin Kostadinov approaches formal coalition negotiations - and whether there is an actual sanitary cordon around his Russophile party or if other parties would be prepared to talk to them.

Down the ranking, and bar the two MRFs, which will be discussed later, we might have a few inconsequential surprises. BSP is likely to continue its stagnation-cum-gradual meltdown, TISP will likely manage to stay in Parliament and two other smaller parties might make it in - the new populists from Velichie, who made it into the current parliament just to fall apart right afterwards, and their (a)ideological twins from Mech ("Sword") of renegade Radostin Vassilev, which might sneak in just because of the expected low turnout and their undercover campaign.

In any case, these smaller parties might only have some role if there is a new "assemblage" led by GERB, and such a thing does not seem too likely at the moment.

The fight for the MRF legacy - by all means possible

The only real contestation taking place during this campaign is not linked to posters and rallies - it is led by the captured state, which is more and more openly loyal to Delyan Peevski. As KInsights has already written in the last few weekly newsletters, the MRF-Peevski faction has been going after some of the most prominent Dogan loyalists without much restraint.

It is very important for Dogan and his posse to keep their influence over the Turkish ethnic minority
Photographer: Lilly Toushek

The most notable case is that of Dzheyhan Ibryamov MP, who got arrested by the Anti-Corruption Committee (CIAF) for allegedly receiving 100,000 levs in marked notes from a businessman. While the authorities have yet to establish the purpose of this alleged transfer - bribe, extortion or something else - the main witness in the case, the said businessman Miroslav Todorov threw another bomb, saying that he knows that Dogan has been planning an assassination attempt on Delyan Peevski through Ibryamov.

Of course, this will be hard, if not impossible to prove - and is rather unlikely. What is certain, however, is that the CIAF and the Prosecution have gone after Ibryamov, who has parliamentary immunity from investigation, against the law. And he is far from the only MRF-Dogan target - several mayors, local councilors and party activists have quickly become the object of investigations linked to vote-buying - something that is unlikely to have begun exactly before the current elections. That's not all - in the village of Lyaskovo near Kardzhali, representatives of the two factions even had a physical confrontation. This is hugely problematic.

An unforeseeable aftermath

This parallel "campaign" carried out by elements of the captured state loyal to Peevski is a huge problem for many reasons beyond the obvious ones linked to the privatization of parts of the state. First of all, it might escalate - Bulgaria has been witness to last-minute false flag campaigns to shake up public trust in elections, like the 2013 Kostinbrod ballots affair or the 2023 machine voting debacle, so everything is possible if Peevski decides he is unhappy with how the vote is going. Secondly, we should be wary of the ethnic element within the MRF, which might always lead to confrontation along ethnic lines.

In any case, regardless of who wins the MRF infighting, it seems like the result of the election will be inconsequential - the parliament will be too fragmented and too populist to form a cabinet. And even if some of the parties manage to muster a new "assemblage" under Borissov, it will be too problematic to survive for long. This means another useless parliament and mounting mistrust in the current political system.

wWith less than two weeks left before the next early parliamentary elections - the seventh in three years - Bulgarians would be excused for thinking most parties have forgotten about them. Apart from the usual roadside panels with well-known faces and uninspired, repetitive slogans, the public rallies and TV debates are fewer than ever even by the standards of our domestic politics. Even more depressingly, most leaders expect another inconclusive result, which is likely to lead to yet another early election.

The only "real" campaign seems to be driven by the civil war within the MRF. The two factions of the movement are those loyal to the honorary chairman Ahmed Dogan, who are under the banner of the newly created Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF, or MRF-Dogan for clarity's sake) and those who stayed with the formal co-chairman of the party, sanctioned mogul Delyan Peevski. His MRF - New Beginning (or MRF-Peevski) seems to be the most active political organization at the moment.

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