Page 57 - Central & Southeast Outlook 2020

2.3 ​Politics - Bulgaria
2020 is not an election year in Bulgaria, but parties will be positioning themselves ahead of the term elections due to take place by May 2021.
Bulgaria’s political life has been far from quiet during the latest mandate of third-time Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. Although his Gerb party is still on top of the polls, the EU and local elections in 2019 showed that it is losing support. Several major scandals have shaken the party and cost the political careers of ministers and top party members.
An early election seems unlikely as Borissov enjoys a comfortable majority in parliament and is also backed unofficially by two of the opposition parties, the ethnic-Turk Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS) and the small Volya party.
However, he is facing criticism from the EU about the lack of any progress in reforming the judiciary and might lose even more votes if the country does not get a green light to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM2) in the coming months. The government has set April 30, 2020 as a new target date for joining ERM2, seen as the eurozone “waiting room”.
With the scandals surrounding Gerb, new political projects have found some room to develop. Although their support is not that significant, three have potential to develop in the coming years and enter the next parliament.
Democratic Bulgaria, a coalition of three parties that strongly criticise Borissov’s politics, gained enough votes to send one MEP to the European Parliament in May 2019, and won almost half of the mayoral positions in the Sofia districts and several in the bigger cities too in the October local election. The coalition is seen as a potentially significant factor in the next parliament.
Another political party that could attract support in the coming months is showman Slavi Trifonov’s No Such State, as Bulgarians have a history of backing charismatic individuals.
Trifonov could gather support from the large number of Bulgarians who tend to seek a strong leader to follow and have been disappointed in the past. The same recipe as that offered by Trifonov has been used by Borissov and, before him, by Simeon Borisov Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Bulgaria’s last tsar before the communist era who served as prime minister between 2001 and 2005. Now that Borissov’s appeal as a man of the people seems to be fading away, some of his followers are looking around for a new leader with similar qualities.
However, while some analysts believe that Trifonov could take around 15% of the vote in the 2021 general election, others consider his moment to enter politics might have passed.
Another project that may be able to break the status quo is the pressure
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