🇧🇬 Bulgarian elections megathread (next up: European and National (?) Parliament 09 June 2024)

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

I'm as clueless as anybody, especially considering that Trifonov (or rather his scriptwriters, Trifonov didn't show up at the press conference) proposed nothing and noone today. The PM-designate and the cabinet will be announced when the time comes (this is homage to the Tsar, who used this stock answer whenever he was asked to elaborate on his political agenda during the 2001 campaign).

It is painfully obvious that ITN can't get any of the PMs on their wishlist to say 'yes'. "Don't answer calls from unknown numbers, ITN are on the hunt for a prime minister," is the joke making the rounds.

The press conference is still ongoing, but it turned into apologia for Vassilev, who apparently would have been a radical right-wing reformist, slashing tax rates and eliminating waste etc. Maybe relevant is that ITN are again not going to offer any positions to other parties (although they have softened the non-negotiation stance a bit) and that they request DB and ISMV support, without support from the 'protest' parties they will let their proposal fail even if it could muster a majority.

The fact that he called a press conference to announce the new PM-designate (the Plan B, I presume one might say) and then neither did he show up at the conference nor was the PM-designate actually named... makes me acutely understand why you called the first cabinet list proposal "unusually transparent" lmao

Has the press conference now concluded? In what ways did ITN soften their non-negotiation stance?

Constitutionally no, the terms for the new elections are fixed. There is a proposal that the parties of the protest and BSP appoint the caretaker government as a permanent one for the 4 weeks or so it would take to have the two elections coincide.

Thank you. And actually I realized I am not sure of this - is the date of the presidential election already known?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

This is my favourite thread on the forum.

[Beagle]

I can't think of a decent translation of French fanfaron, but that's the word that came to my mind.

Maybe loudmouth or braggart?

I am thinking specifically of the type of person who would frame and display their valedictorian award from their hobby pottery class or pay to be included in ABI publications.

In the back of my mind I get the idea that this is just a ploy for ITN to show they are doing something but nonetheless end up with new elections where they would expect to win a landslide of sorts.

Well, good luck with that landslide they're expecting! According to a flash poll by one of the top 3 local pollsters, the proposed PM had a 23/57% approval/disapproval rating, Trifonov's gambit was approved by 24% of the voters, but 70% were not impressed etc. 15% want immediate new elections, 75% (!) want this parliament to form a government... but just 40% expect it to (47.5% expect new elections).

My impressions on the ground are that this move backfired quite a bit:
- the ITN voters who want to wage war against the status quo are surprised to discover that they voted for a government led by someone so unquestionably corrupt;
- the plandemics people are not happy at all with the pro-American tilt of the proposed government;
- not that too many voters pay attention to platforms, but the few that do are quite bemused to discover that apparently ITN is now radically right wing on the economy, since their pre-election party program called for a number of populist/left wing economic measures, while mentioning virtually none of the proposals which the failed PM candidate presented today - and which the Trifonov scriptwriters confirmed the party supports;

I really can't tell what outflanking DB on the right on the economy is intended to accomplish for ITN. If they think that people will suddenly discover that the 'Old Right' isn't that much right-wing any longer, this has been the case for, like, a decade now. It reminds me of how GERB are trying to present Radev as a Russian asset/covert agent and claim that DB has gone soft on Russia - if this is true, either Radev is a master of disguise, or I hope the Russians kept the receipts, because they should be entitled to a refund. If ITN want the hardcore libertarian vote, they are welcome to all 5 of them.

The fact that he called a press conference to announce the new PM-designate (the Plan B, I presume one might say) and then neither did he show up at the conference nor was the PM-designate actually named... makes me acutely understand why you called the first cabinet list proposal "unusually transparent" lmao

Has the press conference now concluded? In what ways did ITN soften their non-negotiation stance?

I think Vassilev was the plan B, actually. And I assume that whoever was plan C did accept yesterday, but got cold feet before the press conference, since the Trifonov announcement did say that the new PM-designate would be announced today.

ITN's original position was that they would name the cabinet, its program and its priorities as a single package, which the other parties could take or leave, but not change/move in any way. Now they are saying that they will not offer any spots in the cabinet for representatives of the other parties, but that they can negotiate on the platform and priorities, and maybe even change a minister or two who are unpalatable to DB and/or ISMV.

Thank you. And actually I realized I am not sure of this - is the date of the presidential election already known?

Constitutionally, the first round can be on any Sunday between the 24th of October and the 21st of November. The new parliament will decide (if they get the time to, but it will lead to a constitutional crisis if they fail to fix a date), but for a number of reasons October 31/November 7th are looking likeliest for the first and second round respectively.

This is my favourite thread on the forum.

Thanks. The number of countries where 'Make politics boring again' would be a winning slogan is huge, but I realized that for Bulgaria this would mean resurrecting Leonid Brezhnev and he was a walking corpse long before his death, so I shudder to think what his zombie would be like.

I do wish GMantis was here, even though we may not see eye to eye politically - not only to keep the thread updated, but also to put up some maps. I could do a municipalities map once the DB activists get their sh... act together and put up all results on their platform, but it could take weeks and I'm not sure how to create a map key.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

- SNIP -

Thank you for your informative replies to all of my points. And all I can say about ITN's policy shift is: lmao.

This is my favourite thread on the forum.

Thanks. The number of countries where 'Make politics boring again' would be a winning slogan is huge, but I realized that for Bulgaria this would mean resurrecting Leonid Brezhnev and he was a walking corpse long before his death, so I shudder to think what his zombie would be like.

I do wish GMantis was here, even though we may not see eye to eye politically - not only to keep the thread updated, but also to put up some maps. I could do a municipalities map once the DB activists get their sh... act together and put up all results on their platform, but it could take weeks and I'm not sure how to create a map key.

Of course it would be great if GMantis were here for ideological diversity and more viewpoints and takes, but I am sure I speak for Heat and others as well when I say that you are doing an absolutely outstanding job of keeping the thread updated yourself.

[Beagle]

Nothing to report, really, other than my mild amusement at:

- TV stations scrambling to fill up airtime with pundits that are clearly as clueless as the rest of us about ITN's next move; even ITN's freshly minted MPs are posting on facebook that they are kept in the dark by the leadership.

I know that the newspaper that first leaked the failed PM proposal had a shortlist of 10 potential heads of an ITN government; 8 of them have already outright refused to take part in an ITN government, have a profile that is too close to that of the rejected candidate, or are DB/ISMV leaders - and ITN has refused to give positions to DB/ISMV. The remaining two are a banker/university professor, who has been ITN's chief spokesman on the economy, but who is rumored to be eyeing the presidency of the national bank, and... the current caretaker PM, the former general and President Radev's chief of staff. I'm starting to suspect that ITN's choice will end up the latter. This will be a very popular move*, but maybe lend some credence to GERB's steadily maintained theory that usurper Radev is staging a covert coup and seizing all power for himself.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

According to the survey I mentioned earlier, when asked 'What should happen now', over 60% answered 'The caretaker government should carry on', the next most popular answer with 42% is 'a formal ITN/DB/ISMV coalition' - incidentally the sum of percentages won by the three parties. 24% would like to see ITN's single party proposal carried out, less than 20% would like to see an ITN/GERB coalition

- DB and 'Old Right' affiliated economists struggling to explain that, sure, we are for lower taxes and less state intervention, but m-a-aybe it is not the right time for expansionary austerity, balancing the budget in 2022, lowering VAT and privatizations, as per ITN proposed PM's plan.

- BSP's own television channel airing some Thiery f...g Baudet conspiracy laden screed in its entirety with the talking heads citing him as some authority on covid, vaccines and the Rockefeller foundation. As a party, BSP will have 10 less MPs in the next parliament - they gave away electable seats to ABV and the other coalition partners they acquired before the campaign - and their popular vote result is as low as it's ever been, but they seem to be trying to plumb new depths. Or maybe I'm wrong, since the speech in the Dutch parliament has been viewed 40k times on the most popular Bulgarian-only video platform and I'm certain that no BSP speech in the Bulgarian parliament has even 400 views. Anyway, BSP are showing some early signs of trying to move into the newly vacated place of the nationalists.

I thought I'd post my attempt at reworking GMantis' electoral district map from April for the July election.  I have no idea how to create a new key, so I used the outdated one from the original, I think the two changes are clear:



For comparison, here is the April one, made by GMantis

[Flyersfan232]

Nothing to report, really, other than my mild amusement at:

- TV stations scrambling to fill up airtime with pundits that are clearly as clueless as the rest of us about ITN's next move; even ITN's freshly minted MPs are posting on facebook that they are kept in the dark by the leadership.

I know that the newspaper that first leaked the failed PM proposal had a shortlist of 10 potential heads of an ITN government; 8 of them have already outright refused to take part in an ITN government, have a profile that is too close to that of the rejected candidate, or are DB/ISMV leaders - and ITN has refused to give positions to DB/ISMV. The remaining two are a banker/university professor, who has been ITN's chief spokesman on the economy, but who is rumored to be eyeing the presidency of the national bank, and... the current caretaker PM, the former general and President Radev's chief of staff. I'm starting to suspect that ITN's choice will end up the latter. This will be a very popular move*, but maybe lend some credence to GERB's steadily maintained theory that usurper Radev is staging a covert coup and seizing all power for himself.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

Show

According to the survey I mentioned earlier, when asked 'What should happen now', over 60% answered 'The caretaker government should carry on', the next most popular answer with 42% is 'a formal ITN/DB/ISMV coalition' - incidentally the sum of percentages won by the three parties. 24% would like to see ITN's single party proposal carried out, less than 20% would like to see an ITN/GERB coalition

- DB and 'Old Right' affiliated economists struggling to explain that, sure, we are for lower taxes and less state intervention, but m-a-aybe it is not the right time for expansionary austerity, balancing the budget in 2022, lowering VAT and privatizations, as per ITN proposed PM's plan.

- BSP's own television channel airing some Thiery f...g Baudet conspiracy laden screed in its entirety with the talking heads citing him as some authority on covid, vaccines and the Rockefeller foundation. As a party, BSP will have 10 less MPs in the next parliament - they gave away electable seats to ABV and the other coalition partners they acquired before the campaign - and their popular vote result is as low as it's ever been, but they seem to be trying to plumb new depths. Or maybe I'm wrong, since the speech in the Dutch parliament has been viewed 40k times on the most popular Bulgarian-only video platform and I'm certain that no BSP speech in the Bulgarian parliament has even 400 views. Anyway, BSP are showing some early signs of trying to move into the newly vacated place of the nationalists.

I thought I'd post my attempt at reworking GMantis' electoral district map from April for the July election.  I have no idea how to create a new key, so I used the outdated one from the original, I think the two changes are clear:



For comparison, here is the April one, made by GMantis

how many seats will each coaltion party takes?

[Keep Calm and ...]

A very good source for bulgarian politics
https://twitter.com/politics_bg/status/1417917520808484871
https://twitter.com/politics_bg/status/1417909178362961920
https://twitter.com/politics_bg/status/1418912095148548096

[Beagle]

how many seats will each coaltion party takes?

Yeah, if I understood the question correctly, Old Europe already gave an answer. I have some quibbles with the Politics Bulgaria account - for instance, the DEN thing within DB was announced, but never actually constituted; I think there is a Movement for Social Humanism MP too within BSP - but it's not important, since there is nothing particularly illuminating about which of the 17 (seventeen) BSP coalition partners have a seat in parliament. The Socialists have a longstanding tradition of running together with a huge number of parasitic have-been/never-will-be minuscule parties across the political spectrum, to the point where some years ago they were forced to fork out over 60% of the state subsidy to these non-entities (Ninova had cut many of these parties off, but it seems that several have reattached themselves). For the record, the SDS component of GERB-SDS is 1/63 (only the party leader, the second in command lost his seat in July). Only DB and ISNI are actual coalitions as such.

And yes, IS!MV! have changed their name to the tamer (lamer) ISNI (Rise Up. We Are Coming. or Here We Come). The naming of that coalition is a long story, probably not worth telling, but since virtually all news outlets choose to translate the coalition's name as Stand Up, We Are Coming, this leads to unfortunate associations*.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

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*There can be other interpretations, of course, but one of the unfortunate associations is a folk saying, 'Stand up, best man, so that I can sit down [in your place]' or variations of the above, used in situations where somebody demands change just to better their own position, without regard to the well-being of the other person or the group as a whole. Which, to anybody familiar with the career of the ISNI leader, is an oddly apt folk saying.

A [Macedonian] tweet that illustrates the folk saying:
https://twitter.com/prckof/status/825701412633997312

I have a question on my own - what is the record for the smallest minority minority government from the outset (without later defections, party switches and the like)? Indications are that ITN will form a government alone with 'confidence and supply' deals with DB and ISNI and outside support by BSP and/or DPS or factions thereof. This minority government will thus begin its life with the backing of 65/240 MPs or just 27% of parliament. My, admittedly very cursory, search indicates that after the 2007 election, the Danish government of Anders Fogh Rasmussen had 64/179 seats (35.75%), not counting the parties that supported it it from the outside. I couldn't find a smaller minority that formed a government at the beginning of a parliament. Does anybody have any suggestions?

[FredLindq]

In modern time. Sweden. 2018. Regeringen Löfven II. 116 of 349 seats i.e. 33.2%.
And Sweden in 1978. Regeringen Ullsten 39 of 349 seats i.e. 11,2%

[RGM2609]

The current Danish govt is backed by a minority of 26.8%

[Beagle]

The current Danish govt is backed by a minority of 26.8%

Ah, of course. The danger of skimming over a Wikipedia article is that when you read a sentence like "The "red bloc", consisting of the Social Democrats, the Social Liberals, Socialist People's Party, the Red–Green Alliance, the Faroese Social Democratic Party and the Greenlandic Siumut,[5] won 93 of the 179 seats, securing a parliamentary majority", you may assume that the parliamentary majority in question is a coalition of sorts. I think this is the presumptive winner, since:

In modern time. Sweden. 2018. Regeringen Löfven II. 116 of 349 seats i.e. 33.2%.
And Sweden in 1978. Regeringen Ullsten 39 of 349 seats i.e. 11,2%

I'm sorry, I wasn't clear enough: I meant minority governments formed at the start of the legislature - I'm aware of other instances of superminority governments, especially in countries/states with a constructive vote of no confidence, but they happened after the parliament had been sitting for some time.

[FredLindq]

Löfven 2 was in the start of the legislature 2018-2022.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

The Hartling government in Denmark between '73 and '75 must surely hold the record, Venstre only held 12% of the seats.

[MRCVzla]

For the record, the SDS component of GERB-SDS is 1/63 (only the party leader, the second in command lost his seat in July). Only DB and ISNI are actual coalitions as such.

Actually, SDS got 3/63 seats (in April were 4/75), along with party leader Rumen Hristov in Sofia 23, a party member from Veliko Tarnovo got reelected, the pary lost 2 seats respect to April but they gained one member in the Sofia 25 constituency. Also in both elections, a member related to the Gergyovden Movement got elected in GERB lists (Lyuben Dilov in Burgas).

[Beagle]

For the record, the SDS component of GERB-SDS is 1/63 (only the party leader, the second in command lost his seat in July). Only DB and ISNI are actual coalitions as such.

Actually, SDS got 3/63 seats (in April were 4/75), along with party leader Rumen Hristov in Sofia 23, a party member from Veliko Tarnovo got reelected, the pary lost 2 seats respect to April but they gained one member in the Sofia 25 constituency. Also in both elections, a member related to the Gergyovden Movement got elected in GERB lists (Lyuben Dilov in Burgas).

Nope. I was a steadfast SDS voter for practically a decade after I turned 18, I still keep an eye out for the party and I can assure you that there were only 2 SDS members in the April parliament (Lazarov in Montana and Hristov in Sofia23) and just Hristov now. To wit:

The Veliko Tarnovo MP - Dimitar Nikolov - is the chairman of the municipal council in the town of Gorna Oryahovitsa, first elected in 2015 and re-elected on the GERB party list (as hinted by his profile on the GERB website). SDS ran a separate list in Gorna Oryahovitsa both in 2015 (as a part of the Reformist Block) and 2019 (a coalition with Volya, BZNS and Glas Naroden), electing the local party leader Petar Gaydarov both times. Nikolov is not a party member of either GERB or SDS, but it has been noted how his designation as a SDS MP may stem from confusion with his namesake - the mayor of Burgas, who was the local SDS party leader before being co-opted by GERB. Granted, this Dimitar Nikolov held campaign events with Hristov both in the spring and in the summer, so there may be a grain of truth in considering him SDS, even though it may have been news to the local SDS party organization before the election.

Edited: As to the "SDS" MP in Sofia 25... I had actually discussed him back in the 2017 parliamentary election thread! As a part of the 'distribution of seats within the United Patriots coalition', when the results for abroad hadn't come in and I thought he had made it in parliament, but UP lost the seat in his district:

The unofficial seat distribution has VMRO and Ataka at 8 seats out of the 27 of the United Patriots coalition, NFSB at 7 and another 4 are difficult to place. For instance, there is the Democrats for Strong Bulgaria founder, who then became Boyko Borisov's parliamentary secretary in the Borisov I government, who then switched to Kuneva and the RB, but has now switched to the NFSB.

This well traveled political nomad (who has been a deputy minister for most of the past four years in the Borisov III government - presumably from the UP quota) apparently indeed claims to be affiliated to SDS now. But, yeah, allow me my doubts about his SDS-ness.

Dilov is the Gergyovden movement - one of the numerous one-man-show have-been parties on the Bulgarian political scene - but unlike with SDS, there is no formal agreement between the two parties, Dilov was invited as a distinguished member of civil society.

Effectively, though, these are distinctions that have more than a whiff of debate about the angels dancing on the head of the pin. There is absolutely no doubt that the GERB coalition partners will vote in lockstep with whatever Borisov says. There may be some doubt about the orthodoxy of two of the new MPs within the BSP coalition, but I'll believe it when I see them rebel.

Edit: I realized that I had been barking up the wrong tree, I forgot that since Borisov didn't take his seat, there is another new MP in parliament, so my earlier text discussed a GERB through-and-through MP

[Beagle]

The Hartling government in Denmark between '73 and '75 must surely hold the record, Venstre only held 12% of the seats.

Right, this must be the winner. So, if ITN form a government, it will be the the 3rd smallest minority minority government ever, unless some nation have had a government that was elected by the only MP present because everybody else overslept or something.

[crals]

The current Danish govt is backed by a minority of 26.8%

They have confidence and supply from a majority of the Parliament however, unlike the Swedish government (and presumably this upcoming Bulgarian government)

[Beagle]

The ITN PM-designate is going to be announced in a couple of hours. Unless there is an abrupt change of mind (never out of the question with ITN), it is going to be the person who got leaked 4 days ago.

Here I will digress - as per usual - and recall a more-than-decade old conversation with some fellow law students . We were discussing how our main constitutional law prof - who at that time was still closely connected to BSP and was a few years away from his stint as caretaker PM under GERB President Plevneliev - rarely deigned to give lectures in person, much less work with sutdents, but that worked out for the best, because he had attracted an absolutely outstanding cohort of assistants in their early 30s. Constitutional law, especially in recent years, is not a field that typically attracts the best and the brightest - other than teaching (and there's room for at most 6-7 professors of constitutional law at a time in Bulgaria) and serving on various quangos, there is literally no work available. Sure, at some point all constitutional law profs end up on the Constitutional court - a body that usually takes up less than 10 cases per year and when your term is done, you get to retire with a pension that is the equivalent of the salary of the chair of the National Assembly - but the rewards, both financial and otherwise, are larger in almost all other fields. So we were wondering why clearly capable young people would choose to go in that field.

A dozen or so years later:
- one of the assistants in question is the Bulgarian jurist with the most citations and publications in international journals and is having an outstanding academic career, at least by local standards;
-  another has been the Presidency's chief legal advisor for both Plevneliev and Radev's term;
- the third... has just been announced as the ITN PM-designate after having been presented as Justice minister in the failed proposal a couple weeks ago;

I guess the moral of the story is you never know what is going to happen, so don't go into a field just because it is more lucrative than another.

42-year-old Petar Iliev never taught my group, so I don't have any direct impressions. Those who know him say that he is a person of capability and diligence, but also of overweening ambition. He does not quite fulfill Trifonov's Graduate of prestigious university requirement - unless Sofia University and [checks notes] a course in British Law at the University of Buckingham somehow fit the bill - but he does have a rather thorough knowledge of law. People are somewhat taken aback by his honorary consulate of Barbados and, one assumes, facilitating capital flight offshore, but it's not like there is an abundance of squeaky clean candidates for office in Bulgaria. More concerning - or relieving for some - are his BSP connections. He is the son-in-law of BSP's organizational secretary (ie the administrator of the party) and his law practice has done quite a bit of work for BSP and BSP deputies over the past few years.

The fate of the proposed government will be decided by the ministerial proposals. Technically, the numbers are there for a political suicide of an ITN-BSP-DPS government (as has been mooted on the BSP TV channel), but it seems to me that the ITN plan is to force DB and ISNI into a corner while negotiating*.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

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* sorry, ITN have painstakingly made a distinction: they are, apparently:
- in discussion, but not negotiating with, DB and ITN
- talking to, but not in discussion with, BSP
- made a presentation, but not talked to DPS

[Beagle]

The ITN PM-designate is going to be announced in a couple of hours. Unless there is an abrupt change of mind (never out of the question with ITN), it is going to be the person who got leaked 4 days ago.

Ah, wouldn't you know it, there has been an abrupt change of mind in the past hour!

- one of the assistants in question is the Bulgarian jurist with the most citations and publications in international journals and is having an outstanding academic career, at least by local standards;
-  another has been the Presidency's chief legal advisor for both Plevneliev and Radev's term;
- the third... has just been announced as the ITN PM-designate after having been presented as Justice minister in the failed proposal a couple weeks ago;

Apparently assistant 3 straight up lifted without attribution whole pages from the dissertation of assistant 2 in a book of his. The plagiarism, alongside some business associations of his in the early 00s, brought an end to Iliev's candidacy - or maybe he has always been a stalking horse, I'm unable to tell.

New nominee is Plamen Nikolov - an ITN MP and EU/MENA regional manager for an American swimwear company, I'm sure we'll learn more about him in the coming few days. It's debatable whether or not the Klagenfurt Alpen-Adria Universitat is a prestigious university.

Edit: clarified Nikolov's biography a bit. It's almost comical how no journalists have any information on him, but at least they've scoured his LinkedIn profile and discovered an appearance of his in the archives of the ITN party TV channel

[Flyersfan232]

A very good source for bulgarian politics
https://twitter.com/politics_bg/status/1417917520808484871
https://twitter.com/politics_bg/status/1417909178362961920
https://twitter.com/politics_bg/status/1418912095148548096

Minor parties get screwed in both coalition of gerb and bsp?

[Estrella]

New nominee is Plamen Nikolov - an ITN MP and EU/MENA regional manager for an American swimwear company, I'm sure we'll learn more about him in the coming few days. It's debatable whether or not the Klagenfurt Alpen-Adria Universitat is a prestigious university.

Edit: clarified Nikolov's biography a bit. It's almost comical how no journalists have any information on him, but at least they've scoured his LinkedIn profile and discovered an appearance of his in the archives of the ITN party TV channel

Judging by what Google suggests when I search for him, I think calling him "anonymous" would be an understatement.

[Beagle]

Minor parties get screwed in both coalition of gerb and bsp?

Not really, no. Like I said, the 17 (seventeen) BSP coalition partners are grifters of various colors that don't contribute much - if anything - electorally. The 1-MP-parties had the following results the last time they ran alone (in parenthesis):
 
ND: never ran alone, but estimated 0.1% (2017)
DNK: 0.53% (April 2021)
ABV: 0.48% (April 2021 - and that was after an enormous amount of free publicity since they ran a loud-and-proud covid denier doctor who denounced any and all restrictions

If the 4% threshold was somehow lifted, to enter the 240 seat parliament would require 0.42% of the vote, so 1 MP is a pretty good estimate of their power.

SDS is a more valuable contributor to GERB, but not by much. The last time SDS ran completely alone was all the way back for our first EU parliament election in 2007, but you can interpolate their power - of course with a huge grain of salt - from the preference vote for GERB-SDS party list in the 2019 EU election: the two SDS candidates on the list got preferences amounting to 0.9% of the total vote.

New nominee is Plamen Nikolov - an ITN MP and EU/MENA regional manager for an American swimwear company, I'm sure we'll learn more about him in the coming few days. It's debatable whether or not the Klagenfurt Alpen-Adria Universitat is a prestigious university.

Judging by what Google suggests when I search for him, I think calling him "anonymous" would be an understatement.

Quite. Our useless media have trawled through their archives and the only time they mentioned Nikolov at all (prior to his campaign for the April election) was when his wife presented her self-published poetry collection in a bilingual edition, where her husband lovingly translated the poems in English.

I probably should have mentioned this earlier, but outside of the Trifonov show scriptwriters and a select group of 10 or so experts, the bulk of ITN MPs went through a televised audition process called 'So you think you can govern Bulgaria'*. People from all walks of life would apply and by some process would get selected to present themselves and their ideas on how to improve the lives of Bulgarians in front of a jury consisting of Trifonov, his scriptwriters and one of the experts in the field where the candidate had their background or focused on in their presentation. Presumably whoever did best went to the top of the party lists for the recent elections.

Spoiler alert! Click Show to show the content.

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* I'm not sure if it was actually broadcast, but the interviews are available on the Trifonov show fb page. And it definitely wasn't called 'So you think you can govern Bulgaria'. But like I said earlier, last time I watched Mr. Trifonov, I was still in school; you'll need another BG political scene observer to keep you abreast of his past and present activities.

Plamen Nikolov went through this process, which was advertised as a way to get into politics without the money, connections and backstabbing it usually takes. His interview has by now been overanalyzed by all sorts of pundits, but it's really nothing groundbreaking - his powerpoint presentation emphasized education reform, with a focus on teamwork and discipline. He advocated a carrot-and-stick approach that apparently worked wonders with his staff of 14 (fourteen) at the swimwear company. That and an hour-long TV interview he did yesterday (in which he had a gaffe or two, but nothing too shocking) is all that pretty much anybody has on him. People are mostly just confused.
 
I still maintain that the fate of the proposed government will be decided by the ministerial proposals - even though one of the scriptwriters suggested today that ITN could stick to the letter of the Constitution, which literally means that the first time anybody hears the proposals would be when the PM-designate reads them out in parliament at the sitting which would vote on them. If that happens, it's on to election No. 3 - but presumably Radev will stall out on giving the mandate to GERB for a couple of weeks so that the parliamentary election happens at the same time as the presidential round 1.

[Beagle]

Update: ITN did announce their ministerial proposals in advance. There were no surprises:

• from a game and political theory point of view, they did the correct thing by naming an entirely partisan cabinet
• the nominees themselves are total randos virtually to a man/woman
• the proposed government is not intended to take power

I didn't put in that last item because of:
- the proposed minister who is allegedly married to a convicted armed robber
- the proposed minister who wrote the rules for the forfeiture of corrupt officials' property, and then promptly left his official position and formed a consultancy agency on how to avoid said forfeiture, uh, allegedly
- the proposed Finance minister who has been officially unemployed for the past three years
- the proposed Justice minister (DB's pet issue, after all) who a week earlier had posted a rant against the 'Soros-oid betrayers' [literally 'sellers-of-their-own-mothers'] from DB. Another well-travelled nomad - ITN being his 6th or 7th party  - this guy has been really unlucky, because his phone got hacked and the hackers posted more vulgar rants just days later, so he has stepped down, allegedly voluntarily. His last minute replacement is another anonymous provincial lawyer, whose claim to fame is rejecting the Istanbul convention by saying, 'so if [male ISNI leader] wants to get pregnant and give birth, that's his choice, but don't force it on me'.
 
Like I said, it is not easy at all to find squeaky clean candidates for office here.
 
I didn't even put in the last item because

- one of the assistants in question is the Bulgarian jurist with the most citations and publications in international journals and is having an outstanding academic career, at least by local standards;
-  another has been the Presidency's chief legal advisor for both Plevneliev and Radev's term;
- the third... has just been announced as the ITN PM-designate after having been presented as Justice minister in the failed proposal a couple weeks ago;

Apparently assistant 3 straight up lifted without attribution whole pages from the dissertation of assistant 2 in a book of his. The plagiarism, alongside some business associations of his in the early 00s, brought an end to Iliev's candidacy - or maybe he has always been a stalking horse, I'm unable to tell.

assistant 3 is now - in an inexplicable reshuffle - the nominee for Interior minister and deputy PM.

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Watching ITN squirm over the plagiarism thing has been mildly amusing:
Let anybody who claims Petar Iliev plagiarized come forward to be sued! - people came forward
Let the person who was plagiarized come forward, since these people don't understand what plagiarism means! - assistant 2 comes forward
Let there be an official academic investigation, since anybody can claim anything! - an official investigation begins
Currently they are at the 'Nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law!' stage, what will happen next is anyone's guess.

I'm saying this is not a serious proposal because the Health nominee from the first proposed ITN government - a 30-year-old UK-based biotech researcher - has now been reshuffled to education where her only qualifications are... having been in various stages of education for more than half of her life, I guess?

The proposed ministers, as well as all ITN MPs, are under strict gag orders - the only persons speaking on behalf of ITN are Trifonov (through fb posts), the scriptwriters and the PM-designate.

So we are heading for showdown vote on Wednesday. The Constitution allows for replacements of proposed ministers (other than the PM-designate) until the last minute, but the official ITN position is that the proposals are final and non-negotiable.

For the third time in modern Bulgarian history the outcome of the government vote is not preordained. The only party that has officially come out with an outright rejection is, as expected, GERB. Here is the outlook today, it may change several times by Wednesday:
ITN - 65 MPs - yes - duh
GERB - 63 MPs - no - also duh
BSP - 36 MPs - yes - for... reasons, which I will not go into, but maybe not unanimously
DB - 34 MPs - no - probably helped by an increase in polling, almost certainly overtaking BSP in a hypothetical third election
DPS - 29 MPs - shrug emoji - this may be a good time for a reminder that if MPs do not register for the sitting, the threshold for approval is lowered
ISNI - 13 MPs - no - but maybe not unanimously

An ITN government that gets support only from BSP and with tacit support from DPS is certainly not what anybody expected and, going by earlier statements from ITN, is not something that they are willing to sustain. Likelihood is a three-peat election, but anything can happen. At least the government formation will probably take enough time that this hypothetical third election will coincide with the Presidential.
 
I mean, it's not as if this country wasn't doomed before...

[Beagle]

After a particularly disastrous interview with the plagiarist nominee for Interior minister and deputy PM - it was so brazenly shameless that I am inclined to agree with the widespread opinion that it was designed to serve as a pretext - ISNI, DB and BSP all declared that they will not support the proposed ITN government. Subsequently, ITN are withdrawing their proposal and will not submit it to parliament for a vote. Of course, the Trifonov/scriptwriters statements are full of recrimination and accusations that DB and ISNI have betrayed the protests and joined the status-quo parties, but the sense of relief is palpable. The easiest possible explanation why ITN didn't want to form a government is the sense that they could never live up to their promises or satisfy their 'want-everything-and-want-it-now' base. There can be other explanations, but they verge on conspiratorial thinking.

Anyway, since GERB will return the mandate as soon as they get it (as per Borisov's word), President Radev will probably stall on giving it to them. Under the circumstances, the aim will be for 2 in 1 elections - presumably on the earliest possible date, which is 24 October - but if GERB receive the mandate immediately, the constitutional timing won't work. Parliament can sabotage the plan by setting the presidential date for November, but this is unlikely. We should know by the end of the week at the latest. Again, if they really want to test the Constitution to the limit, the parliamentary parties may neglect setting a date for the Presidential election, in which case... I guess the Constitutional court will have to intervene.

Technically, the possibility still exists that this parliament forms a government on the third try - President Radev is entitled to choose any one of the other parties, the political reality is that he's going to pick DB or BSP. BSP have promised to nominate the (very popular) caretaker cabinet without any changes - including the DB friendly ministers - but both GERB and ITN are on the record that they will vote against a continuation of the current government. DB will probably propose a partisan government on their own, but, again, chances are incredibly slim that they gain the required ITN support. Radev will technically have to appoint a new caretaker government afterwards, it will be interesting to see if he takes the opportunity to reshuffle it. But, obviously, there is a ton of important legislation that will not get passed for a further 4 months at least.

TL:DR No ITN government - likeliest scenario is combined presidential/legislative election on October 24. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have.

[RGM2609]

I have two questions -

1. How likely is it for the early election to change the political scene in a meaningful way and make the formation of a political government possible? I know a fourth election is a no-no and some technocratic, national unity or minority govt would emerge if the scene stays the same but will the new election make the formation any easier?

2. Radev is probably the frontrunner for re-election, but which parties will endorse him, and will ITN or DB run someone against him? Oh, and also, will Borisov run? He seems smarter than that but Wikipedia says he is the potential GERB candidate.