The presidential campaign started with aggressive black PR, but the political headquarters and the candidates have limited this approach after seeing its negative impact. This was stated by the political scientist from the “Myara“ agency Svetlin Tachev to the Bulgarian National Radio.
“There is practically no campaign. It started with relatively aggressive black PR, through various topics such as “the Bulgarian Escobar“, such as “Petrohan“… But it seems to me that the headquarters and the candidates themselves saw that this could also have a negative impact and it seems to have stopped this“, said Tachev.
He pointed out that among the main problems facing the candidates is the fact that parliamentary elections have already been held in the spring. According to him, this makes it difficult to present messages that will impress voters and may lead to lower turnout.
The opposition will intensify its attacks
In his comment on the political situation, Tachev said that the government has the comfort of having a full majority, but at the same time it is faced with difficult decisions. According to him, this narrows the political space around the opposition and creates conditions for sharper attacks.
“The tolerance that the government had is over and from now on the opposition will take advantage of every moment“, said Svetlin Tachev.According to him, the opposition is looking for topics on which it believes it is strong, and the pre-election environment is further intensifying the confrontation. The presidential elections are scheduled for October 25, with the Central Election Commission registering 27 presidential candidate pairs.
Focus shifts to cultural conflicts
Tachev pointed out that the PP-DB and PB view the presidential vote as an opportunity to mobilize their voters, since there is a regular government and early parliamentary elections are not in sight. According to him, the initiative committees that nominated the candidates are also used to attract a peripheral electorate.
The political scientist believes that political messages are gradually shifting from the economy to the culture wars. “The economy is taking a back seat to the cultural battles. We see during this campaign attempts at similar manifestations of these battles, in which a large part of the candidates are involved, because they are more interesting and attract more“, he said.
Sources: bnrnews.bg, dnes.bg, bta.bg