A big political mistake is that GERB did not nominate a candidate for president. This was said in the program “This Morning“ on bTV by Tsvetan Tsvetanov, former Minister of the Interior.
“There will be local elections in just one year. We know that GERB has always been dominant in local elections“, he pointed out.
According to him, the party will not be able to consolidate for the upcoming local vote, and this goes through an exercise such as the presidential race.
“In my opinion, the absence is a weakness and in all likelihood, the GERB leadership may have reached this political conclusion because the slim result that they could get in the first round may be less than the 430 thousand votes they received in the last parliamentary elections“, he believes.
According to him, there will be a much lower voter turnout in the upcoming presidential elections. “Because the main parliamentary forces that are represented in the Bulgarian parliament – these are GERB and MRF, they do not nominate their own candidates“.
“Only 5 months ago GERB had 430 thousand votes, MRF had 230 thousand votes, which means that 660 thousand votes are voters who will not be able to be motivated in a campaign when they do not see their representative“, explained Tsvetanov.
According to him, Boyko Borisov is not able to motivate and direct voters to any of the candidates in the presidential pairs. “And that is perhaps why this passivity and this distance from all the candidates“.
“ Maybe the column “I do not support anyone“ will be increased. In the 2021 presidential elections, there were 60 thousand voters who did not support any of the candidate-presidential pairs. I think that this time a kind of record will be achieved“, commented Tsvetanov.
According to him, Iliyana Yotova is emerging as an undisputed leader in this campaign in the first round. “But it is very important who will be those who will be able to fight for second place. Because with the rise of the presidential candidate pair Kostadin Kostadinov – Petar Volgin, a very contested race for second place with the pair Andrey Gyurov - Georgi Kandev“ is emerging.
“With Rumen Radev, there were about 1.4 million votes. I believe that a significant part of them would redirect to “Vazrazhdane“, but they would not redirect to PP-DB“, Tsvetanov shared.
According to him, PP-DB has nowhere to get this reserve to be able to obtain a higher result than the 408 thousand votes they received in the last parliamentary elections. “I think that is precisely why the campaign needs to be much more pragmatic“.
“When I left GERB in 2019, I told Borisov that the party is structured in such a way that for at least 4-5 years there will be no problems and it will be leading and will be one of the first political forces“, Tsvetanov said.
“But with this headstrong behavior that they are showing, and the rejection of a large part of the honest, valuable and respectable members and supporters of GERB, the party is in this state, which achieved 430 thousand votes. This is an incredible collapse in trust, given that at the beginning GERB had 1.6 million“, Tsvetanov said.
Tsvetanov said that GERB is already losing a large part of the municipal infrastructure.