Earlier this week, the new President Rumen Radev took the entire power in his hands, after he dissolved parliament, fixed a date for the snap parliamentary elections and presented on Friday the caretaker government appointed by him, and its priorities. As expected in his speech during the ceremony for the presentation of the cabinet Rumen Radev stated that its key task would be to organize snap parliamentary elections on March 26 by preventing “manipulations and  distortion of the election process“. Radev outlined other priorities too, such as work on the 2018 Bulgaria Presidency of the European Union and guarantees for the country’s financial, social and economic stability. In turn, caretaker Prime Minister Ognyan Gerdzhikov stated he would not deny a priori the work done by the second cabinet of Boyko Borissov. „Successes will be upgraded, and mistakes made – corrected”, he vowed.

Following a handful of rituals for the change of power, now swords will be crossed in the fresh election campaign. Although under the law it should open a month before election date, its actual start was on Thursday when the last plenary session of this parliament was held. Rather than drawing up a sober analysis of what they have done, and trying to explain why the rating of the legislature is so alarmingly low among the public, the MPs started bickering among themselves with a view to the early elections on March 26th.

The first one to take this line was Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Kornelia Ninova who said from the floor that for the two years of the 43rd National Assembly the right-of-center majority had been dealing with „unscrupulous political unions“ aimed at „power and personal gain“. The floor leader of Gerb Tsvetan Tsvetanov naturally described the term of the cabinet led by Borissov as successful and praised the former government for having raised the minimum monthly salary, cut unemployment and started the judicial system reform. The representatives of other parliamentary parties took the floor to either hail or criticize the former government and to spell out vows on how their parties would set the country on a route to a bright future in case they won the elections. Everything was a sad déjà vu. 

Judging from figures released by pollsters the big battle this spring will be between Gerb and BSP. For the time being, voters favor Gerb, but its lead over BSP is a percentage or two. The euphoria at BSP that came after last November the contender in the presidential race supported by it Rumen Radev won the elections, has started to evaporate. The lineup of the caretaker cabinet has proved somewhat like a cold shower for the party’s supporters who expected more tangible BSP presence in it. Most observers believe that the victory of Rumen Radev was not due so much to the support of the Socialists but rather to the irrelevant candidacy of Gerb for president, namely, Mrs Tsetska Tsacheva. The leadership of Gerb has admitted the failure and has put ashes on its head. This leadership though has strong experience in how to win an election and will for sure undertake correcting moves during the campaign.

If forecasts of a stalemate between Gerb and BSP after voting materializes, the situation would favor Gerb, given that among the new parliamentary parties there will be a few ones suitable for a coalition with them. This applies to BSP to a much lesser extent. To recap, the political race ahead will be interesting to follow – let us hope that it won’t involve blows below the belt or malicious attacks between players.