Mark Chapter 6
34 And Jesus, when he came out, saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion for them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things.
35 And when it was already evening, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late;
36 send them away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and hamlets and buy themselves something to eat.”
37 And he answered them, “You give them to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?”
38 And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they knew, they said, Five and two fish.
39 And he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass.
40 And they sat down in rows, by hundreds and by fifties.
41 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven and blessed; and he broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples to set before them; and he divided the two fish among them all.
42 And they all ate and were filled.
43 And they took up the fragments, twelve baskets full, and likewise of the fish.
44 And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.
From Rumen Radev, chapter 1
Politics loves miracles. Especially those where the multitude is fed, the rows are arranged, and at the end the ballot boxes are full. In the Bulgarian political landscape today, Rumen Radev is not simply fishing with a single rod – he is casting a net into the electoral sea. And whatever gets in is welcome. The strategy is not to rely on a narrow party niche, but to encompass the widest possible perimeter – disappointed, protest-minded, nationally sensitive, socially anxious, institutionally skeptical. A net, not a hook.
This tactic makes sense in conditions of a fragmented parliament and a tired society. When people are “like sheep without a shepherd”, they are looking for a figure, not a platform. They are looking for a tone, not a detail. In this sense, a space of the unknown is being created around Radev – a project that has not yet been fully articulated, is not structurally formed, is not burdened with specific coalition commitments. It is precisely this unknown that currently gives him a conditional lead – there is talk of 10%. But uncertainty is a short-lived resource.
High voter turnout may prove to be the decisive factor. It traditionally pushes small parties to the periphery. When the mass electorate mobilizes, protest formations without a stable core begin to lose oxygen. The threshold for entry rises, fragmentation decreases, and the political scene consolidates around larger players. If the turnout is really high, some of the small entities will drop out of the parliamentary arithmetic. This automatically increases the weight of the former.
But here comes the paradox. Radev's lead will begin to melt the moment he starts speaking as the leader of a specific political project. Until now, he could have been a supra-party corrective, an institutional critic, a moral arbiter. In the campaign, however, every word will be a position, every position - a dividing line.
When the net is wide, it gathers different types of fish. But when you start to pull it out, inevitably some of the catch slips away.
Radev will open fronts for attack – on geopolitics, on economics, on personnel decisions, on previous official administrations. He will be asked questions that he has never had to answer in a party context before. Contradictions between words and actions will be sought. This is the normal logic of a democratic clash. The 10% lead is a function of expectation; the campaign will turn it into a function of concreteness.
Against this background, Borisov and Peevski are silent. But silence in politics is rarely passivity. It can be waiting, observing, accumulating arguments. Letting the opponent speak first means allowing him to outline his own vulnerabilities. The question is how long this silence will continue. Campaigns have dynamics – at the beginning it is probed, in the middle it is attacked, at the end it is mobilized.
If Radev manages to turn the wide network into a sustainable coalition of interests, he will remain a leading factor. However, if the internal contradictions of the assembled electorate come to the surface, some of the “saturated“ will leave.
Politics is not a miracle with five loaves and two fish. It is a process of constant legitimation.
Ultimately, the elections will show whether the multitude will remain arranged “in ranks, in hundred and fifty“, or will scatter at the first stronger wind of the campaign. The net can be thrown wide. The real question is what will remain in it when the time comes to count.