The registration of political parties and coalitions for the forthcoming early Parliamentary elections in Bulgaria began on February 2 and will last until February 8. It is important for the society to know the number of  the parties registered for the coming elections and what types of coalitions can be possibly formed after the elections, but the main focus now is on other aspects of the pre-election situation.  Earlier, it became clear that a majoritarian voting system in two rounds will not substitute the existing proportional voting system at the next Parliamentary elections.  The country's authorities are now facing the challenge to provide voting machines to all polling stations in Bulgaria by March 26.

The start of the registration for the early elections coincided with a decision of Bulgaria's Supreme Administrative Court which read that the authorities must provide voting machines to over 12,000 polling stations in Bulgaria and abroad. That court overturned the decision of the Central Election Commission to provide voting machines to 500 polling stations only. Therefore, CEC must provide and encrypt over 12,000 voting machines and teach all members of the electoral commissions to handle those machines properly. Bulgaria's caretaker cabinet promised to find enough financial resource for those machines. However, the Central Election Commission does not know where to buy so many voting machines from. It has no idea what would happen if the tender for the purchase of voting machines fails due to lack of applicants either. Bulgaria's Ombudsman Maya Manolova told the Bulgarian National Radio that the national legislation enabled the institutions to make a gradual transition to machine voting, but they have neglected their duties to such an extent that the law regulations cannot be fulfilled in time now. Meanwhile, the National Assembly was already dissolved and no amendments to the current legislation can be made until the date of the early Parliamentary elections - March 26. The whole situation is absurd and some people associate it with Catch 22.

The situation looks even more complicated, because in the course of one week only several sociological agencies published different election forecasts. According to a public opinion survey of Alpha Research Agency, GERB party would place first at the forthcoming elections and will earn 32.6% of the votes, followed by the Bulgarian Socialist Party, which is expected to earn 28.8% of the votes. Later, Gallup sociological agency published the results of its latest survey and forecasted that the Bulgarian Socialist Party would win the early elections and earn 29% of the votes, whereas GERB is expected to place second with just under 28% of the votes. Finally Estat forecasted that GERB would win convincingly the forthcoming elections, because according to its latest survey 36.1% of all voters would support that party, whereas BSP would earn 27.5% of the votes only. The huge disproportion between the results of the sociological agencies cannot be explained with different sociological methods used during the surveys and raise doubts about possible political affiliations.

Ivan Hadjiyski Institute for social values and structures forecasts tense election campaign. According to its analyses, the results of the elections are unpredictable. The authors of those analyses contend that the electoral support towards the two main political parties the Bulgarian Socialist Party and GERB has almost reached parity and that the chances of a one-party cabinet are only theoretical and that a possible formation of coalition government is surrounded by many uncertainties and questions. Some political parties have started to plan how to behave after the early elections. That is why we can expect a tense post-election campaign as well. If those expectations materialize, Bulgaria may not have regular government in April.

English version: Kostadin Atanasov