The protest energy has been revived again and again against the chief prosecutor - Borislav Sarafov. Will it lead to mobilization or further division?
Civic protest energy has been rekindled and once again it is directed against the Attorney General. On Tuesday evening, a protest was held at Largoto in Sofia, organized by the "Justice for Everyone" Initiative. (IPV) against the election of Borislav Sarafov as chief prosecutor.
Activists, municipal councilors, MPs and party leaders from "Continuing the Change - Democratic Bulgaria" took part in the protest. Thus, citizens and their political representatives once again came together to the square as like-minded people, fighting for justice and legal order.
Civil Charge for Electoral Mobilization
The protest took place in the decisive phase of the election campaign and could encourage the electoral mobilization of this community. But it could still be divided because of the statements of some of the civil speakers.
It is normal for representatives of civil organizations steadfastly pursuing their causes to act as pressure groups on their political representatives. It is understandable that they even keep a mentoring tone to them, like Velislav Velichkov from the IPV, who ultimatum demanded what steps should be taken. Although politicians have already taken the key ones or have announced that they will take them - already in August PP-DB submitted to the parliament a project to amend the Law on the Judiciary, prohibiting the Supreme Judicial Council with an expired mandate from electing the chief prosecutor and the chairmen of the supreme courts, and a week ago the coalition announced that it will also refer the matter to the Constitutional Court.
It is understandable even when people like the leader of "Fighter" Georgi Georgiev declared himself as the only fighter against vote-buying and demanded, after his upcoming revelation in a TV program PP-DB, to immediately convene the parliament and demand the resignation of the interior minister. Otherwise, according to him, they did not deserve the trust of the voters - no matter that a prominent person from the formation together with a civil group announced and continue to announce hundreds of names of vote dealers and demanded the resignation of the minister. But it is completely unacceptable to warn of a physical invasion of the SJC and the Ministry of the Interior and to "grab the stick" - that's why Velichkov rejected this option in Georgiev's speech.
Assembly with the "nuts"?
But it is not the different degrees of radicalization in speech and action that are at the heart of the divergence between civil society organizations and the parties of this community. And in the very idea of what democratic politics is. The problem was clearly reflected in the words of the former chairman of the Sofia District Court, Metodi Lalov, who also defined himself as worn out and wasted by his own political representatives: "We don't need Borisov - the mutt, from Peevski - the mutt, from Dogan - the mutt. You made an assembly for our good. You lied a hundred times, you broke trust, take note! Someone is making a compilation for us?!"
PP-DB never managed to leave the discourse on treason and explain whether the so-called an assembly was a success or a failure. On the one hand, they tell their voters that they have learned their lesson - that is why they cannot allow a new assembly and are looking for an even more disguised quasi-coalition option under the formula of an equally distant or mutually acceptable prime minister. On the other hand, they brag about the achievements of the administration of the "Denkov" cabinet, keeping silent that it was not independent - with which they not only forgot about their recognition that the lack of clear shared responsibility for power by GERB was one of their mistakes, but and that they continue to give reasons to Boyko Borisov to distinguish himself from the "assembly" and to claim that in the last three years it is going backwards.
The delusions of some civil activists
Civil activists, often with political ambitions, in turn instill the understanding that political victories are the surest and cleanest through street pressure. And that as soon as citizens start chanting in the streets, the Attorney General will leave immediately. Strange why no one has done it yet? They oppose what they discover as hot water when they become MPs themselves - that in any parliament you cannot avoid collaboration with other parties, especially when you are in the minority - including in order to broadcast from the parliamentary quota the SJC, which do not choose Sarafov or another Sarafov as the chief prosecutor. And the understanding that, in general, in the parliamentary republic, the collaboration is not necessarily with mutts, but with hundreds of thousands of voters who elected them - the vast majority completely freely, without selling their vote.
Political identity and political responsibility are not measured by "who you are with", but by whether you remain yourself, as well as whether and to what extent you achieve your goals.
Another outflow or emergency consolidation
Finally, the ebb is not only in the electoral support for the political representation of this community, concentrated today mainly in the PP-DB coalition, but also in the energy for civil protests. Tuesday's protest, which was relatively modest in terms of participants, may grow, but the scale of 2013-2014 is only a fond memory for community representatives and was not reached even by the protests of the previous few years.
If, instead of sowing new divisions within its ranks, this democratic political community fails to recharge itself by mutual induction of the energies in its civic and party parts, it will melt still further and its political weight will weaken. For this purpose, there is an urgent need for consolidation in its understanding of what democratic politics is and how it is done without conflict at the non-governmental level and at the party level, at the protesting citizen level and at the voting citizen level. One is simple and powerful "for" and "against", the other is more complicated, weaker and slower, but more persistent "for" and "against", conditioned by many "when", "how" and "with whom".
***
This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial team and of DV as a whole.