site.btaUPDATED Higher Voter Turnout or New Political Formation Might Stop Series of Failed Government Formation Mandates, Experts Say

A high voter turnout or a new political force are some of the possible solutions to end the series of failed mandates to form a government, political experts Ivan Nachev and Boris Popivanov told BTA.

The upcoming snap general elections will be the sixth following the regular parliamentary elections on April 4, 2021. The last early elections were held on June 9, 2024. The parliamentary groups in the 50th National Assembly failed to form a cabinet at the third and last possible attempt. Since April 4, 2021, President Rumen Radev has handed 21 government-forming mandates. Two of them resulted in the formation of a regular government.

In case of a high voter turnout, only parties with considerable social influence will get political representation in the National Assembly, Ivan Nachev said. According to him, it does not seem likely at the moment that one party would get a majority that would guarantee the formation of a government by just one parliamentary party.

"Since 2001, the trend in the Bulgarian Parliament has been to elect coalition governments and it is becoming more and more fragmented, which means that either there should be a broad coalition or the largest parties should agree to govern together, as in the previous National Assembly. This trend is accompanied by another feature - in each new parliament enters one absolutely new political party for Bulgaria's political scene," Nachev said.

According to Nachev, the low voter turnout allows any political adventurer to get representation in the National Assembly.

The way out of the situation can only be political, believes Boris Popivanov. Either to arrive at such a distribution of the parties in the parliament, where the main formations decide that the ratio between them allows them to govern in a mutually beneficial way, and not one to feel hostage to the other. Or that a new political force emerges that, with a large majority, can "take out" the others and form a government, he argued.

In Popivanov's words, the whole political debate is shifting towards the caretaker cabinets, not the regular ones. There has never been such a big dispute over who will participate in the next caretaker cabinet. The parties seem to think that it will be much more profitable for them to secure the same positions, albeit informally, in the caretaker cabinet through their own ministers. This is exceptionally flawed because it kills the credibility of the basic mechanism of democracy - elections, Popivanov said.

Sooner or later a new big party will emerge, politics does not tolerate a vacuum, Popivanov argued.

Parties need change

The political culture of the parties needs to change, Nachev said. "They should approach the interests of Bulgarian society with responsibility and realise that political opposition after elections does not lead to results. The main task of MPs is to create laws for the benefit of society and to elect a government that solves society's problems," Nachev explained. If the next National Assembly is again fragmented, as it seems to be at the moment, only a change in the behaviour of party leaders can lead to a successful outcome, he added.

The change in political culture means not only that parties should be aware of their responsibility, but also of their behaviour, Nachev said further. Political education within the parties should be emphasised, as well as responsibility in the ranking of the lists, so that responsible people can get into the National Assembly,. Consensus and compromise should be sought. This means that in order to have a government, the first cabinet-forming mandate holder has the responsibility to conduct the negotiations in such a way that all participants can compromise, to give up some of their demands for the sake of forming a government, the political expert pointed out.

The parties think only about whether their voters will accept a coalition, instead of thinking that if they form a government that has a slightly longer-term horizon and create some kind of programme, this will pay off sooner or later, Popivanov said. Many more voters who did not support them now will get behind them in the future, because they will see that for a country to have a future, it must have four-year horizons ahead, he believes.

Is there a need to change the electoral system

There are opportunities, of course, to facilitate the formation of a new government, Popivanov noted. Some of them have already been suggested publicly - creating artificial bonuses for the first political force, as in Greece, to receive a certain number of MPs as a bonus. However, the expert said most of the parties would not accept such changes.

A change in the electoral system will not solve the problem with the impossibility of fulfilling the mandates, but will deepen it, Nachev believes.

The procedure with the three cabinet-forming mandates is an extremely well-designed one and in line with the world constitutional practice, Popivanov pointed out. The first two mandates are for the first two main forces, which always have the best chance of gathering a majority around them, and the third one is a crisis mandate, which gives the opportunity to look for different options that would unify the parties around this last chance, he explained.

This worked for more than 30 years, but has now stopped because the main political forces can never find a mutually beneficial option in which they can govern together without feeling that one is ruling on the back of the other, Popivanov said.

The caretaker cabinet has always been something extraordinary, when there are new elections, the parties have felt obliged to look for an option for a new government - this has been the norm. Because caretaker cabinets have become the new normal, this urge to seek such an option is diminishing, Popivanov said.

Bulgaria has had two regular governments in the last three years, but neither of them has served a full term. The snap elections to be held in October will be the seventh parliamentary elections in three years.