Someone said the other day (I don't remember who, it was a politician): “If you want something to change in this country, vote for parties that are not currently in the National Assembly”.
It sounds very romantic at first glance, but I don't think it's feasible.
At the very least, because such parties do not have the capacity to govern the country even with the best wishes and with the purest thoughts. And they will have to turn to the professionals - behind the scenes and behind the scenes (is “backstage” the opposite of “backstage”?) - and the horse will still go to the river.
This on the one hand. On the other hand, it is extremely imperative that this time, at last, a definite winner is announced with a sufficient majority so that he bears responsibility for his eventual governance. Lest he once again be forced to form nightmarish coalitions solely on the basis of arithmetic.
I was looking at the register of parties that will participate in the next election. The variety is great, 24 pieces clean, after dropping those there who had to drop for technical reasons. Who says there weren't those willing to rule! How should we, ordinary citizens, navigate, how should we choose? But before we start choosing, we must answer the question of what we expect as a result, what we want, what we imagine should happen in this country, so that we can get better and finally smell satisfied.
It is customary to expect three things - freedom, justice and prosperity. And not necessarily in that order. There are people, many people, for whom prosperity comes before freedom, and justice is somewhere in the queue, and if it falls off the wagon, no one will notice. For other people, such as criminals, freedom and justice cannot happen at the same time, because if justice prevails, they will not be free. Finally, there are those (such as Sandor Petofi) who are ready to give up everything else, even love, for the freedom. For me, for example, to this day the greatest achievement of all that happened after November 1989 is freedom of speech. Regardless of how much they abuse it. When, as high school students and students, we resisted the totalitarian regime (no matter how much we resisted!), we sought above all freedom of speech. And of conscience, some add, but conscience is always free. She can only be painful when things don't happen according to her ideas.
But to summarize - the mass normal citizen, simple like us or not, is looking for happiness and wants to vote for the one who, in his opinion, will deliver it to him. As in “happiness” only earthly goods - material and emotional - are modestly included. I refrain from saying “spiritual”, because they are usually not reached, no matter how loud slogans are raised, no matter how important culture is to everyone.
What should we choose? On the one hand, there are large systemic parties among the candidates. These are GERB, BSP and DPS, although BSP is no longer large (not in terms of membership, but in terms of parliamentary presence), and DPS broke into two smaller ones. These parties can be expected to have a routine and personnel capacity.
On the other hand, there are large anti-systemic parties such as PPDB and “Vazrazhdane”. There are also small anti-system parties such as ITN, but it doesn't seem to enter. And for a short time it was the first force - crazy work. Anti-systemic and probably almost everyone from that list, from the register, because they are saviors and come to put an end to the previous nightmare. These parties hope that they will be expected to fulfill the hopes of the suffering people, but since they only offer unbridled populism, no one pays attention to them anymore. They used to be fun, now they're annoying. See, “Revival” is a true anti-system party. While everyone else is Euro-Atlantic, they are Eurosceptic. While others are Russophobes, they are Russophiles. While they are all Eurofederalists, they are Eurosceptics. And so it should. It is not possible for everyone to agree on the important issues and then compete for the hearts of the voters. It can't. And it is even harmful, because it makes people choose according to completely different principles, often dishonest, distorted and corrupt. Therefore, as well as because of its uncompromising behavior, “Revival” will continue to grow.
At PPDB, things are crazier. They, like many others before them, had one single value to the voters - that they would sweep away the status quo, reboot a system and put the bad guys in jail. And Boyko Borisov, before he became a builder, was an avenger. “The Change” however, it has been in the system for a long time, it is part of the status quo, but it has not added any new value, but rather adds to the protester's value. This certainly confuses the voters and the time will come when the “ala-bala” it will not help them.
Of course, the ideological divides still exist, albeit seriously muted. The left/right divide is not at all clear, because due to our membership in the Euro-Atlantic structures, we adhere and it is proper to adhere to the general policy of these structures. And when these structures are right-wing, we are right-wing; when they are left - we are also left. Or come on, not us, but those who govern us and who, if they were not, the structures in question would not have left them in power. It is precisely because of this feature that major parties of ours stand in unnatural positions on issues such as the Istanbul Convention and the Marits.
Instead of left/right, the liberal/conservative divide has been more relevant for quite some time, which is almost the same, but not quite, because sometimes conservative can behave like left, and liberal - like right. This divider, although not very relevant in the modeling of mass political thinking, becomes more distinct in the collapse of the DPS. It is very likely that DPS-Peevski will take a more conservative position compared to DPS-Dogan, at least because the old and overall DPS was, at least in theory, liberal. Moreover, such a position is natural for Peevski, because he is a typical example of how capital turns into power, and not the other way around, as was more popular in recent years of democracy and pluralism. From this point of view, Peevski is a conservative. But to the extent that he has chosen to dance a broken dance with official Europe and America, and to the extent that ugly liberalism reigns there (I specify “ugly”, because liberalism is not ugly to begin with), to that extent Peevski, at least little by little, must play him a bit of a liberal . And to compete with the other DPS who is more liberal, although both have absolutely nothing to do with liberalism, as seen by both its classical and modern supporters.
But with the DPS it is different. Without being technically inside their party life, I would venture to say that in view of the specifics of their electorate, the essential part of it, the mayors play a key role. Because in smaller settlements people's livelihood depends on the local government. Well, he could also depend on local business, but in most cases local business depends on local government (public procurement), so everything still goes to the mayor. If it's Dogan's - they vote for Dogan. If it's Peevski's - they vote for Peevski. That is, we can reasonably assume that the battle in the split DPS is a battle for mayors.
Ideology, however, recedes very, very much into the background and because of factors that are not always given enough attention, and often not at all. One such factor is vote trading, corporate voting and coercive voting due to fear and ignorance. The price per vote had gone up a lot and this election would be a kind of record breaker for bought votes. But this manipulated vote cannot win the election. He can distort the result - more or less, it depends on the turnout - but change it - difficult, very difficult.
Another factor in the retreat of ideology is the incompetence of a large part of the electorate. Each person has an ideology that is determined by his worldview and interests, but no one sits down to explain to him what his ideology sounds like in political language and which of the many political subjects is closest to it, and from there it is most likely that will act in the interest of a voter with the same ideology. Many people say they are communists, but they go to church, that is, they accept that consciousness determines being, not the other way around, as Marx taught. For many of them, nationality is more important than class affiliation, not as Marxism-Leninism teaches.
Finally, worst of all is the suspicion that we have a lot of choice, but in the end, whoever we vote for, we will get the same. It's banal. And it's scary because it's banal. Besides, I think that Carthage should be destroyed.
Source: trud.bg