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Southeast Europe
March 9, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 16
this time he might be forced to choose between making even more compromises to get a new ally or calling early elections at a bad time. If so, this would be the fourth consecutive early election for Bulgaria.
The government is not very stable and the risk of early elections is real, Cvete Koneska of Control Risks told bne IntelliNews. “The last Bulgarian government didn’t last very long, it’s largely be- cause of Borissov himself, so who knows what will happen.”
The United Patriots came to power for the first time in 2017, in coalition with GERB, prompting fears of a shift to the far right by Borissov’s new government. However, they have recently started showing strong signs of instability and in February Deputy Prime Minister Valeri Simeonov admit-
ted that the alliance of three nationalist parties will most likely collapse before the next election, blaming his colleague Krassimir Karakachanov. Simeonov is the leader of the National Front for Salvation of Bulgaria (NFSB), which makes up the United Patriots along with the Karakachanov’s Bulgarian National Movement (VMRO) and Ataka of Volen Siderov.
Meanwhile, former firebrand Siderov, who has been relatively subdued for the last few years, decided to end his silence and started attacking GERB’s decisions. He began by accusing Boriss- ov’s right hand, the leader of GERB’s parliamen- tary group Tsvetan Tsvetanov, of causing conflict within the ruling coalition. This was quickly re- solved at a meeting with Simeonov and Tsvetanov, after which the leader of Ataka said he was satis- fied by the answers he received.
However, he then went even further, demanding the resignation of the GERB MP who said that Ataka could be easily replaced in the ruling coali- tion by Volya, a new party founded by controversial businessman Vesselin Mareshki.
Simeonov also provoked a PR disaster for Bulgar- ia in early February after publishing a statement
demanding that Ska Keller, a German MEP and the president of the Greens group in the European Parliament, be deported to Turkey after she took part in environmental protests in Bulgaria. The rather racist attack forced Borissov’s government to issue a statement saying Simeonov’s comment was not the official position of the Bulgarian state.
If the patriots collapse, this would put pressure on the government, though the chances of Borissov losing the support of the parliament do not seem high as he has another potential ally in the parlia- ment in Volya, and is unofficially supported by the ethnic-Turk Movement for Rights and Freedom (DPS). Still, these new allies might cost him too many compromises.
Borissov could theoretically benefit if he gains political momentum during Bulgaria’s EU chair- manship, and he might want to use that to end his dependence on the shaky United Patriots.
“[H]e might feel he wants to capitalise on that and then use that to again call early elections. I doubt he’ll do that, but you never know. And the govern- ment is not very stable to start with, so there’s al- ways the risk that it will not survive its full term,” Koneska said.
However, with the unending scandals and suspi- cions that the government is not really tackling high-level corruption, Borissov’s hopes for a bright end to Bulgaria’s EU presidency that could reap him political dividends seem to be fading away.
“The government really has the right rhetoric. They are talking the talk, they are saying all the right things that the audience in the EU wants to hear, but also the domestic public wants to hear ... A lot of the rhetoric is similar to what happened in Romania a few years ago, but the results are too few,” Koneska said.
Bulgaria initiated several cases at the beginning of the year, trying to show that it is really fighting corruption this time. The prosecution has charged