Comment by Evgeniy Dainov:
As a rule, rebellions and uprisings that originate from the countryside do not achieve success. An example is the Spartacus uprising, as well as the numerous peasant uprisings throughout medieval and early modern Europe. To succeed, the event must take place in the capital - as with the English, French and Bolshevik revolutions.
However, coups - i.e. the seizure of power in violation of established rules, but also without the mass support of the population - have a high chance of succeeding, even when they originate from the countryside.
Caesar's coup originated in Gaul, present-day France, and succeeded in seizing power in Rome. In 1922, Mussolini's fascists also set out from the countryside with their successful "march on Rome". In 1936, General Franco set out with his troops all the way from Africa to seize power in Spain three years later.
Peevski's coup
Something similar is currently being done in our country by Delyan Peevski with the substantial support of Boyko Borisov. For now, they have divided the spheres of conquest: Peevski controls the countryside, and Borisov - Sofia and the other large cities. The plan is obviously for the real power to be in their hands in the end, and for any elections to only seal the results of the coup.
On several occasions, starting in 2013, Delyan Peevski tried to break into the heart of the central government in the country - to seize power quickly and from within. The series began with his appointment as head of the National Security Agency (DANS) after he promised (to whomever he wanted) that he would arrest Tsvetan Tsvetanov and Boyko Borisov within days. But he encountered nationwide resistance from the residents of large cities and withdrew. He decided to seize power with a flanking maneuver - first to install himself at the head of a party with experience in penetrating power, and then, when he received a mandate in that party, to become prime minister. However, the MRF did not receive a mandate, and Peevski himself had not fully consolidated his power within the party. Therefore, he had to resort to another roundabout maneuver - to take over the MRF entirely in order to negotiate a mandate for the next elections.
After failing to take over the MRF with a direct attack, Peevski again went to the flanks. He began to take over the party from the bottom up, starting with the local government and local organizations. And he succeeded. DPS-Dogan currently has a handful of mayors and an even smaller handful of local organizations that are expected to switch to Peevski at any moment. And half a dozen regional governors of the respective regions have already resigned under his pressure, opening the door for him to seize the next level of power.
The Fifth Column in Sofia
At the same time, Boyko Borisov, who lost the elections in Sofia, also set out to regain power in the capital from the outside in. He managed to achieve the removal of several "small" mayors of the PP-DB with the expectation that they would get bogged down in long-term legal disputes, while his agents exercised real power in the respective regions. However, the removed mayors decided, instead of sinking into the quagmire of legal disputes, to go to new elections. And they started to win them.
And here it got interesting. Having reached the second round as the favorite, the PP-DB candidate clashed with Borisov's street army, known as the "Delta Guard", which is suspected of having brought dependent votes to the ballot boxes. The PP-DB candidate in "Iskar" lost. This loss was an obvious signal for the long-prepared next phase of the coup in Sofia. Resignations of PP councilors and mayors poured in, and the coup reached the heart of the power in Sofia.
There, the PP-DB's positions had already been weakened by the departure of "Spasi Sofia", until then part of the anti-GERB coalition. Now the "fifth column" was involved.
The origin of the term "fifth column" dates back to the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Asked by reporters how he planned to take Madrid, Francoist General Emilio Mola replied: "I am advancing on the city with four columns. Inside it I have a hidden fifth column that will strike when necessary".
The fifth column in our case was the institutions known as "Peevski's clubs", i.e. the police and the prosecutor's office, which also struck. Meanwhile, the weakening of the PP-DB on the periphery of power continued with more defections, and the coup plotters reminded the audience just in case that at any moment they could once again activate the classic coup tool - a transport strike.
Peevski and Borisov's calculations
The coup in Sofia is clearly in Borisov's favor with the support of Peevski's clubs. Borisov is also in favor of the coup in Dobrich, where the councilors who left the PP joined not the New Beginning, but GERB.
Receiving significant support from Peevski's fifth column in Sofia, Borisov will owe him a favor in the process of Peevski's own coup, aimed at seizing power in the country. After Peevski's destruction of the MRF and the weakening of the PP as a result of Borisov's urban coups, the obvious hope of the two coup plotters is that the Turkish and minority electorate will flow to "DPS-New Beginning", and the democratic people who voted for the PP will flow to GERB. In this situation, the calculation of the two is obvious: in the elections in six months, their parties will be in first and second place and thus be able to realize a mandate with Peevski as prime minister.
What will Borisov play? He has already said to himself: president of the "democratic community", in which he also has GERB. But he clearly doesn't know one very important fact about the ongoing coups everywhere: Peevski has long been smarter than him and has his own candidate to nominate for president on behalf of the "democratic community" - but without GERB. And this is another huge risk for the PP-DB at a time when they are not particularly combat-ready.