High voter turnout or a new political force are among the possible options that could stop the series of failed mandates to form a government. Political scientists Ivan Nachev and Boris Popivanov commented on this for BTA.
The upcoming early vote will be the sixth after the regular parliamentary election on April 4, 2021. The last early election was on June 9 this year. It has reached this point after no agreement was reached on the formation of a cabinet and from the third attempt. Since April 4, 2021, President Rumen Radev has handed over 21 mandates, with two of them establishing a regular government, according to information from the “Reference“ department. of BTA.
With high voter turnout, only parties with significant influence in society will receive political representation in the National Assembly, Ivan Nachev pointed out. According to him, at the moment it does not seem likely that one party will get a majority that would guarantee it the formation of an independent government.
„Since 2001, the tendency in the Bulgarian parliament is to form coalition governments, and it is becoming more and more fragmented, which means that either there must be a broad coalition, or the largest parties must agree to rule together, as in the previous National Assembly. This trend is accompanied by another feature - in every new parliament, a political party that is absolutely new to our political life enters,” commented Nachev.
According to Nachev, the low voter turnout allows any political adventurer to get representation in the National Assembly.
The way out of the situation can only be political, believes Boris Popivanov. Or to arrive at such a distribution of the parties in the parliament, where the main formations decide that the ratio between them allows them to govern mutually beneficially, and not one feels hostage to the other. Or for a new political force to appear, which with a great result "to blow away" others and make a government, he explained.
According to Popivanov, the entire political debate is shifting to official offices, not regular ones. There has never been so much debate over who will be in the next cabinet. The parties seem to think that it will be much more profitable for them to secure the same positions, but unofficially in the cabinet through their ministers. This is extremely vicious because it kills confidence in the basic mechanism of democracy – the elections, commented Popivanov.
Sooner or later a new big party will appear, politics cannot tolerate a vacuum, believes Boris Popivanov.
Parties need change
The political culture of the parties must be changed, according to Ivan Nachev. “They must approach the interests of Bulgarian society with responsibility and realize that political opposition after the elections does not lead to results. The main task of the people's representatives is to create laws for the benefit of society and to elect a government that solves society's problems, Nachev explained. If the next parliament is again fractured, as it appears to be at the moment, only a change in the behavior of party leaders can lead to a successful outcome, he added.
The change in the political culture means not only that the parties realize their responsibility, but also their behavior, noted Ivan Nachev. Emphasis must be placed on political education within the parties, as well as on responsibility in arranging the lists, so that responsible people can be elected to the National Assembly, Nachev explained. Consensus and compromise must be sought. This means that in order to have a government, the first holder of the mandate is responsible for conducting the negotiations in such a way that all participants can make compromises, give up some of their demands in the name of forming a government, the political scientist pointed out.
Parties only think about whether their voters will accept a given coalition, instead of thinking that if a government is formed that has a slightly longer-term horizon, creates some program – this will pay off sooner or later, commented Boris Popivanov. Many more voters who did not support them now will stand behind them in the future, because they will see that for a country to have a future, it must have four-year horizons ahead, he believes.
Is there a need to change the electoral system
There are, of course, opportunities to facilitate the formation of a new government, Popivanov noted. Some of them have already been suggested publicly – the creation of artificial bonuses for the first political power, as in Greece, to receive a certain number of MPs bonus. However, according to him, most of the parties will not accept such changes.
A change in the electoral system will not solve the problem of the impossibility of fulfilling the mandates, but will deepen it, according to Ivan Nachev.
Boris Popivanov pointed out that the three-mandate procedure is an extremely well-conceived one and corresponds to world constitutional practice. The first two mandates belong to the first two main forces, which always have the best chance of gathering a majority around them, and the third is a crisis, which gives the opportunity to look for different options that will unite parties around this last chance, he explained.
This worked for more than 30 years, but now it has stopped because the main political forces have never been able to find a mutually beneficial option in which they can rule together without feeling that one is ruling on the other's back, Popivanov said.< /p>
The caretaker cabinet has always been something of an emergency, when there are new elections, the parties have felt obliged to look for an option for a new government – that was normal. Because office offices have become the new normal, this desire to look for such an option is also decreasing, Popivanov believes.