Local elections, central mess

On the Orthodox St. Dimitar’s (analogue of James) Day, October 26, 2003, Bulgaria held elections for mayors and local government council. In fact, there is no winner to celebrate the outcome. In many locations, including the capital city of Sofia, there will be a second round this coming Sunday. Whatever the final countdown next week, the economic and political change is already clear.

Results

The voters’ turnaround is the lower in the history of local elections – 32% against 54% in the previous (local) elections of 1999. The election system is based on party lists. Almost half of the votes went to support parties not represented in the incumbent parliament. The traditional rate of these “odd” votes is 25 in general elections and around 1/3 in the local elections.

The party of the incumbent PM, Mr. Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha’s National Movement Simeon the Second (NMSS) is extremely unpopular. It is not likely to get more than 5-7% of the seats in the local councils and will have one mayor, out of 254, although it won 50% of the seats in the legislature in the general elections of 2001 (then, 43% of the vote).

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), the political party Bulgarian Muslims vote for, NMSS coalition partners and a swing-vote holder (1) in the today’s parliament, did not improve its public standing either but it lost support to anyone (due to the nature of its constituency).
The only party that managed to consolidate more support is the ex-Communist Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP). But this consolidation is more symbolic than real. Local standing of BSP improved from 32% of local councils seats to 34%. The symbolism comes from the comparison to democratic reformers of the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) that rescued the country from hyperinflation and economic collapse in 1997 and managed, by 2001, to secure Bulgaria’s EU and NATO prospects. The UDF had 33% of the local councils in 1999, now it is loosing 1/3 of those seats.

What is also important is the reshuffling the mayors’ package. BSP ousted UDF from few larger cities that were perceived as traditional bastions of the democrats, and it successfully challenged the mayorship of Sofia. (MRF announced it would call its voters to support the BSP candidate on the second tour in Sofia. This support is not likely to make difference, and the ex-UDF and 1997 caretaker PM, Mr. Stefan Sofianski could be elected for a third mandate.)
In fact only Socialist retain positions from previous local elections but, as far as it is possible to construct analogies, they do not significant improve their public standing from the last general elections (when they got less than 20%).

Reasons

UDF is loosing, to some extent because NMSS rhetoric and policy for two years has been to blame democrats, cooperate with socialists (restoring their affiliates to executive posts, especially in the ministry of interior and security services) follow elements of central planning in their economic policies. These policies lead to number of splits in the right-the-center spectrum. E.g. Mr. Sofianski believed (2) in coalition with Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and favored loose fiscal policies like MRF; these ideas motivated him establishing a political party of his own.

More importantly, however, UDF did not recover from 2001 electoral losses. The leadership has been week, values – still unclear, internal quarrels scared the voters and corruption image was not repaired. Actually, this image was reconfirmed during the campaign: the internationally suspected businessman, Michail Chrony, expelled from Bulgaria by the UDF government in 2000, announced and proved in the press that one of his off-shore companies donated $200,000 in 2001. In fact, his support to NMSS equals at least $500,000 and other politicians benefited from him as well but it was a too detailed consideration to attract public attention.

In this situation, BSP remained consistently populist, avoided splits and gained the presidency (in the presidential elections of 2001). By constitution, the president is rather ceremonial post but provides for good visibility. Also, the socialists were rather opportunistic and had forgotten their anti-NATO negativism of few years ago and skillfully learned the EU Speak.

The low participation rate also contributed to their stronger performance in comparison to other parties.
However, this rate is itself a case in point. The likeliest explanation is that NMSS was elected on the anti-corruption ticket mixed with populist promised to “significantly improve” everyone’s living standard. In 2003, neither the government is more transparent (many people believe actually that it is less) nor the standard of living, naturally, is as good as people want to have it. And there is no alternative to emerge on the horizon.

Prospects

The local elections were really symbolic. They proved the incumbents are disregarded and that His Majesty the Prime Minister is not a popular leader. The economy is doing OK, although at some sub-optimal performance levels. There is no alternative to challenge NMSS. MRF sticks to its unique position. Hence, early elections are virtually impossible.

This does not mean that there is a chance for the government to regain credibility. In fact, the 2005 general election campaign has already started.
Reasonable economic and fiscal reforms to enhance the disposable income are still theoretically possible but could make a political sense in a longer than 2005 horizon. NMSS vision is based on higher conventional taxes and greater redistributive role of the central government. It is already too late to reshape the vision – the debates on the 2004 budget officially start this week and there is no criticism or opposition requiring more entrepreneurial freedom. Currently, if we do not count individual opinion leaders and think tanks, all possible criticism comes from the left-off-the-center; irrespectively these are voices of political parties, trade unionists of business associations.

The time is short; there will be no political alternative to emerge before 2005. BSP will be still going strong but not to the extent to win 50+1 seats in the next parliament. UDF has no time and does not seem inclined to re-think values, re-write massages and recruit new faces. At it best, it will be a key opposition party in the new, post-2005 establishment. The same is the best prospect for NMSS. MRF will remain a swing vote holder.

The overall prospect is for a minority government and ad hoc political (and parliamentary) majorities to lead Bulgaria towards EU. As of today, it seems impossible that Bulgaria significantly improves its positioning vis-a-vie other EU candidates and the union itself.

(1) NMSS lost eleven of its original 120 seats in the 240-member legislature, and is currently totally dependant on MRF votes.

(2) On October 29, 2003 Mr. Sofianski announced that he has accepted the UDF support for the second round of the elections.