A new PP-DB alliance, this time with Radev, will repel their most staunch anti-Russian voters. The option for PP-DB to promise "never an alliance with GERB", but also "never an alliance with Radev" is the purest, but also the weakest. What then?
During the consultations with GERB and PP-DB, President Rumen Radev was summoned by some and asked by others whether he would enter the political arena, since we are going to early elections. Radev rejected the invitations, likening them to debates about whether a cat is alive or dead, reminiscent of the thought experiment of physicist Schrödinger 90 years ago.
Is it too early for Radev to enter the party arena?
The convenient moment for Radev to live as a party cat seems to be right before he appoints a caretaker government, which he will leave to Iliyana Yotova to complete his mandate. This way, he will avoid the inconvenience of choosing a GERB and Peevski candidate for prime minister, because almost everyone in the “House Book“ is like that. He may still refuse a prime minister candidate, as he did with Goritsa Kozhareva, who insisted, or rather was insisted, that Kalin Stoyanov be interior minister, but this will ultimately not lead to a result – he will replace a thorn with a thorn. And the “early” going down the muddy party terrain will give Peevski and his wards enough time to chase yesterday's presidential advisors “on the path of Koprinka“.
However, if Radev goes down the political terrain for the upcoming elections, which will most likely be in March, this will deprive the PP-DB of the currently convenient position of bracing the question of whether they will be with him or not - because he is still president, and his project is gone and it is not clear whether it will be there at all and in what form. Radev also demonstrated closeness to the PP-DB at the consultations on Monday, by supporting their demands for full machine voting and the removal of Peevski's security, which does not depend on him after all. However, once he becomes party leader, he will be both an ally of PP-DB in the battle against Peevski, and their competitor.
The fear of a new alliance of PP-DB, this time with Radev, will grow into indignation among the most staunch anti-Russian voters of the coalition. The hard option of PP-DB promising simultaneously “never an alliance with GERB“ and “never an alliance with Radev“ seems the most orthodox, but also the weakest politically and condemns them to isolation in the next parliament – to the impossibility of implementing or decisively participating in the cherished reforms.
The question of compromise before the PP-DB
So far, three goals have been heard from the PP-DB for the next parliament:
- a majority of 160 votes to replace the Supreme Judicial Council from the parliamentary quota, and why not for possible new constitutional amendments;
- a majority of 121 votes for independent governance;
- a first political force that is far from an independent majority, but which will still find it easier to explain with whom it will govern, because it will lead smaller ones behind it and has managed to beat both Borisov and Radev.
All three goals are completely valid not in terms of which is more realistic or mobilizes more supporters, but because they pose to the voters the question of compromise: the greater the election result, the smaller the compromise for the government.
However, hinting at compromise to the voters is not enough, PP-DB must make them jointly responsible for the consequences according to the election result and conclude an agreement with them on how far the compromises extend. This is exactly what the coalition failed to do in the assembly with GERB – and half of its voters punished it, rejecting responsibility from themselves, without admitting, at least some of them, that they themselves accepted, albeit with disgust, this assembly as inevitable.
PP-DB must not make the same mistake a second time and must come to an agreement with their voters on the issue from now on – can they be allies with Radev against Peevski and corruption, at the expense of more Russia and Euroscepticism, just as they were allies with GERB for Europe and limiting the power of the pro-Russian Radev, at the expense of a postponed fight against corruption that never happened?
Pre-election clarity – with or without Radev
Of course, the political formulas for a coalition are very different, and first we need to see the electoral weight of each formation separately, so that the parameters of a possible collaboration are clear. In any case, however, the pre-election contract with the voters in its simplest form is mandatory and it cannot rely only on the promise - we will not betray our principles, just as we did not do it when we were in a coalition with GERB. This task is difficult to the point of impossibility, but it cannot be circumvented, because the tearing of shirts will be both pre-election - with an outflow of suspicious voters, and post-election - with voters willing to punish, and with party resignations.
Ultimately, the question comes down to this: is it possible for PP-DB and Radev to conclude a pre-election coalition agreement for governance, the likes of which we have never seen before, or for PP-DB to pre-election rule out any option for a joint coalition with him?
And can PP-DB and GERB without Borisov?
If Radev skips the March elections and hopes for the next ones in the summer or a vote together with the presidential one, this will free PP-DB from the inconvenience of having to decide against him and will give them a chance to reap the maximum part of the protest wave themselves. This may even lead them to the first political force (much less likely with an independent majority), which in the next parliament, however, will be alone and will have to make compromises with small formations, similar to GERB in its outgoing parliament. Or they could come up with the formula "with GERB maybe, but without Borisov, he will retire", because their goal is to dismantle the "Borisov-Peevski" model.
However, if PP-DB does not win and remains second after GERB, this will probably lead to new elections (GERB will hardly repeat a new coalition with its previous partners), which will be Radev's last chance to appear on the field as a final savior. The risk for him is that the wave for change will have already diminished and he will not win as much as he could have earlier. But he may have prepared a completely radical platform for then, for example, for a Grand National Assembly that would introduce a presidential republic, in order to hope for a sweeping result against the long-standing political deadlock.
This comment expresses the author's personal opinion and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the DV as a whole.