Comment by Georgi Lozanov:
It is somewhat paradoxical that everyone continues to fight PP-DB, even though after their fall from power and their electoral support halved, they are in a marginal role. Their former partner in the “assembly“ Boyko Borisov regularly accuses them of all sorts of sins, the last of which is that even more than “Vazrazhdane“ tried to prevent our entry into the eurozone.
All kinds of attacks and insults
Delyan Peevski keeps calling them “poodles“, also referring to the widely circulated footage with the poodle and the bundle between his teeth, with as much evidentiary force as an animated film. Toshko Yordanov also does not shy away from insulting labels such as scoundrel, idiot, and imbecile. The BSP are more polite in their attacks: he calls them incompetent, incapable, and irresponsible. Radostin Vassilev also adheres to the same register - in addition to all the anti-PP-DB rhetoric that he managed to provoke with the recording made for this purpose. For Kostadin Kostadinov, they are, of course, “national traitors” and “infantile imbeciles“, while members of his party prefer to show their attitude to them directly by hand.
Ivelin Mihaylov still seems to be avoiding direct confrontation with them, which does not prevent him from creating suggestions that they are again preparing to participate in a government dominated by Peevski. Perhaps only Ahmed Dogan, too busy with his own survival, has not reached out to them. On the other hand, Rumen Radev knows no bounds – he has recently called them charlatans, but he does not miss an opportunity to hint that they are pretending to be democrats, while in fact they are only interested in power and money. Here we must add the wide circle of public spokespeople and defenders of Radev, Borisov and Peevski, who may argue among themselves, but wherever they start, they end up in a showdown with the PP-DB.
What is the goal?
Why are they shooting a cannon at a political sparrow? The reason could be the current rulers' desire to receive recognition from the EU. And for this to happen, it would be good to reveal that the PP-DB not only has no merit for Schengen and the euro, and before that for the aid to Ukraine, but that they even allegedly worked in favor of the Kremlin. It is not very easy to convince the enlightened, but how much more so the unenlightened… Or the opposite - the desire may be to belittle. The PP-DB represent liberal democracy in our country, so attacks against them are attacks against it with the heavy propaganda arsenal of stigmatization - genders, Sorosoids, smart-ass, etc.
But the EU is mobilizing to defend liberal democracy, including by increasing its military budget, in order to oppose the ideology of power and the deal that the new master of the White House professes. In such a confused situation, hating the PP-DB is a form of the geopolitical flexibility preferred in our latitudes - You don't say anything against Europe in order to enjoy its favor, and your rhetoric is in line with today's America, so that someone else is always to blame (Peevski set the tone long ago and was the first to turn his expectations towards Trump).
Resistance against the two great evils of Bulgaria
However, the main reason everyone is attacking the PP-DB is that they are total opposition - both to the ruling party and the opposition. This is because they are the only ones demonstrating the political will to resist both of the great evils of modern Bulgaria - corruption and unregulated power, and accordingly - Russian influence and Euroscepticism.
The remaining political players prefer, while focusing on one of the two evils, to be distracted by the other. The current government with the mandate of GERB in coalition with ITN and BSP has made our entry into the eurozone its priority, but without giving up on the governance model that gave rise to protests against corruption in 2020, an indication of which is considered to be the closeness to Peevski.
This makes containing the double resistance from the PP-DB a complex task, which they are trying to solve by supporting the government for the eurozone, and at the same time “We continue the change“ are preparing to submit a vote of no confidence in it immediately after the EU Council's decision on the introduction of the euro. A separate issue is that without a sufficiently significant specific reason, their vote will look more like an apology to the electorate for the compromises to GERB than the start of an effective debate in parliament about corruption at the highest levels of power.
And the support for the vote requested by the PP-DB by the outspoken Eurosceptics will be a “disservice”. Because the fight against corruption is needed by these Eurosceptic forces only insofar as it serves their distant goal - to install a pro-Putin government in Bulgaria. In Trump's current second term, this goal does not seem so distant to them - that is why a competition between them for supremacy in the eyes of Moscow has already begun. After “Vazrazhdane“ twinned with Putin's party “United Russia”, Radev urgently took the opposite step. He proposed a referendum on the euro, although shortly before that he himself had pointed out its unconstitutionality. And he did it not just any time, but precisely on “Victory Day” - as they say: Has anyone noticed us? Cheap theater, but with the potential to become dangerous.
The Citizens' Vote
So it is much more sparing for the PP-DB if the Russian proxies, instead of supporting them, continue to sing in the haters' choir. The more vocal it is, the more likely it is that they will not turn out to be political sparrows, since they are bothering everyone. Where can they get their currently invisible power from? Apparently not from a corporate vote, not even from a party vote, but from the citizen vote, which flows away when they make mistakes, but does not flow elsewhere and stands as a reserve for liberal democracy. It can remain in lethargy, it can go out on the streets, but it can also enter the ballot boxes if the PP-DB does not retreat in either of the two difficult battles for a Western European state based on the rule of law.