Page 65 - bne_Magazine_May_2018_print

bne May 2018
Opinion 65
set up the Yes Bulgaria party prior to the March 2017 general election, claiming that it can fight corruption and break the status quo. The party easily grabbed the support of younger people who protested in Sofia in the summer and autumn of 2013, angered by the parliament’s decision to appoint contro- versial businessman Delyan Peevski as head of the state secu- rity agency. However, this was not enough for the new party to secure seats in the parliament, and it is now trying to unite several small opposition parties, hoping to gather more voters.
Yes Bulgaria is typical of new opposition parties in the region, which are located in big cities and are betting on ideas that cannot beat the populistic appeals of the much stronger and more experienced ruling parties.
“Pro-reform, anti-corruption parties are strong in the capital but not in the countryside, where parties can establish a client- patron relationship with voters. In Bulgaria, the pro-reform vote is small, as the fate of the Reformist Bloc (a disparate alliance of several parties) shows,” Taylor says.
Koneska agrees and says that the “social media give the impression that the new parties have a stable network, but in practice their reach is very superficial compared to the more complex apparatus the more established parties have – with local branches, with local media, with the administration, with businesses and so on, which makes them much more permanent and more difficult to dislodge”.
Feeding the status quo
Ruling parties are also very successful in presenting themselves as the least worst alternative and, as Petar Cholakov, chief assistant at the Social Control, Deviation and Conflicts depart- ment at the Sofia-based Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, says, “The apathy of voters feeds the status quo.”
Most Southeast European parties in power use tactics summed up in Florian Bieber’s “Ten rules by a 21st-century Machiavelli for the Balkan Prince”. Tactics outlined by Bieber, professor
of Southeast European Studies and director of the Centre
for Southeast European Studies at the University of Graz, include controlling elections before election day, controlling
“Montenegro is the most acute example of a hopeless opposition”
the majority of the media, talking about the fight against corruption without taking any serious steps, a lack of ideology and unfulfilled promises for change in people’s lives.
Bulgaria differs somewhat from its neighbours in the Western Balkans as it has three main parties dominating the political life. Yet in other ways it is similar: all three parties – Citizens
for the European Development of Bulgaria (Gerb) which
is currently in power, the Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) – have all been accepted as part of the status quo by both voters and political analysts. Attempts by new, fresh faces like those behind Yes Bulgaria to break the establishment seem doomed to fail as they come up against the powerful ruling elite.
“On one hand, new formations with such claims [to beat the
“Pro-reform, anti-corruption parties are strong in the capital but not in the countryside”
status quo] appear. On the other hand, the party system’s crisis, the lack of success of the current players to mobilise a significant part of the voters shows that there is a potential for new political forces ... to play the role of an alternative,” Cholakov tells bne IntelliNews.
However, he adds that the country could again witness a project arising from “unparalleled, unstoppable by anything political populism”, which would not change the status quo, instead blending with it and serving its needs. “The fate of such projects is to be like fireworks – they shine brightly and effectively on the political sky for a short time and without changing anything,” Cholakov says.
Pressing the wrong buttons
Another problem for the newly established opposition in SEE is that most parties are personality-dominated rather than focused on ideas, and they often lose credibility as their leaders seem driven by one main goal – to personally benefit from gaining power. This has been the situation with parties from the Reformist Bloc in Bulgaria to Bosnia’s Social Democrats (SDP).
“The Reformist Bloc was seduced and destroyed by [Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boyko] Borissov, but with the active participa- tion of its leaders. Some of them directly agreed to get on board – to participate in power, others hesitated and did not take clear, firm positions regarding GERB,” Cholakov says.
In Bosnia & Herzegovina and in Serbia, opposition parties also seem unable to go beyond the personal ambitions of their leaders or press the right buttons for voters.
Torn by political conflicts, Bosnia has been dominated by ethnic parties after the Social Democrats (SDP) failed to establish themselves as a reliable multiethnic alternative.
“In the 2010 elections, the SDP, which was the successor party to the League of Communists in Yugoslavia, was the strongest party, but four years later lost more than 80% of its voters
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