One More Round for Everyone: Status Report from Bulgaria after the 6th Early Election

Our podcast series goes on with the 7th episode of its ‘Bulgaria spin-off.’ This time, it was Dr. Mariyan K. Sabev from the Center for the Study of Democracy to give us insights into the ever-lasting Bulgarian political saga.

As the expert pointed out: this election was not about political ideas but mere fighting among the parties for parliamentary representation. There were no coherent messages, no party programs communicated to the electorate. The politicians did not share their visions about the future, nor did they outline any concrete steps as for how to help Bulgaria end its constant political crisis.

Dr. Sabev stressed that due to unending spiral of early elections, Bulgarians are widely disengaged with politics. Yet, the decision-makers do not want to do a thing about that situation. The root cause of all the above must be the lack of a proper political class.  Instead, Bulgarian political actors are waiting for external drivers to lead the country out of the dark forest of ungovernability – our guest analyst concluded.

What can be said about the fairness of the election? How was it possible for a party to fall short from getting in the national legislation by only 27 votes? Are the Bulgarians heading towards yet another round of early elections? These are just a few of the interesting issues we touched upon in our latest episode.

With the help of guest experts and politicians, in the podcast series of MCC’s Centre for Political Science we endeavor to analyze which actors are the real winners of the parliamentary and municipal elections taking place this year in different European countries and what exactly can be considered a real victory after the ballot counts.