The campaign for the European elections in Bulgaria has been quite apathetic so far. The campaigning has been mostly on TV - in the form of debates and video clips. The national TV is also covering the campaign events of all the parties which in most cases are indoor meetings with 20-50 spectators/party members. I myself saw a campaign poster in the streets of Sofia for the first time just yesterday. The elections are on Sunday and nothing shows this will change in the next five days.
The extremist “Ataka” (meaning “attack” in English) seems to be the only party using a slogan related to the European issues. The nationalists touch upon the enlargement question and surprise, surprise, their slogan reads “No Turkey in the EU”. As biased as it is, this message is directly connected to the future of the European Union and concerns all the 27 member states.
The “ATAKA” poster reads: “That would’ve been the situation if not for us Bulgarians. Let’s stop the fez (turbans) now again!”
The rest of the parties employ rather vague and mostly domestic-bred appeals. The party tipped to win most seats - GERB simply plagiarizes Obama - “Let’s prove that Bulgaria CAN”. Sounds funny in English and vague at best in Bulgarian. The Bulgarian Socialist Party, running second in the polls, is campaigning under the slogan “We protect the Bulgarian interests in Europe”. Outrightly ridiculous appeal when we talk European elections. I guess their MEPs will still sit in the PES group and not try to form some Bulgarian group in the European parliament. And it’s quite pretentious to claim such thing when the socialist-led government managed to get all the European funds for Bulgaria frozen because of numerous corruption scandals.
Now comes the interesting part - the party of the Turkish minority in Bulgaria (member of the ALDE EP group) employs the slogan “Give Trust, get Support and Security”. The capital letters read the party abbreaviation - DPS in Bulgarian. That seems to the only idea behind that bunch of words. The centre-right Blue coalition, which is the last formation given chances to pass the electoral threshold obviously also decided to borrow from the American political experience. Their campaign moto is “It’s time for the good (people)”.
It’s easy to reach a verdict - the political actors in Bulgaria perceive the European elections merely as a first tour of the domestic ones (to be held on July 5th). The parties refuse to fulfill their obligations to inform and “educate” the citizens about the real European issues and take the campaign as a chance to position themselves better for the elections that matter. Opinion polls predict a turnout of 35-40% but with such a “campaign” I doubt it will go far beyond the 28.9% the 2007 vote reached.
(12 votes, average: 4.42 out of 5)
Loading ...
further to the north not even the nationalists can be capable of coming up with a EU related slogan, as extremist as it may be… all Vadim and Becali came up with was “Two christians and patriots will save the country from theives”…
these elections need a new electoral system that would oblige these insignificant politicians to change or disappear.
Of course the question of the possible Turkish accession to the EU is much more tense in Bulgaria than in Romania.
Regarding the new electoral system, do you think that if the people that now sympathize to Vadim and Becali had a chance to vote for another European party they would have done that? Choosing Berlusconi or Borisov (more refined populists) or maybe the Polish Law&Justice (conservatives-to-be)?
exactly, local grown populists like the ones you mentioned would be crushed under a new system, because their public is only local. of course, they could still get votes, but even they would be obliged to use some European topics in the campaign, if they were surrounded by Euro-oriented candidates.
That’s a really ironic observation, Hristo - I like it.
Only the nationalists campaign on European issues - and those parties that support Europe all campaign on national issues.
But are there any major parties in Bulgaria that are strongly pro-Europe?
@ Josef
The two main parties - GERB (populist, claims to be centre-right, EPP member) and the Bulgarian Socialist Party are definitely pro-European. So claims to be the third-largest - DPS (Turkish minority party). ATAKA are running fourth in the polls - their views have been already described.
Of the parties that compose the “Blue coalition” (currently estimated to have one MEP), the Union of Democratic Forces (www.sds.bg) is mainstream pro-European, while Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (www.dsb.bg) oppose the Turkish accession and display some characteristics of Eurosceptics-to-be.
Interesting.
There are no openly pro-European mainstream parties in the UK. It’s not an issue that will win you votes.
I think the differences in political culture and EU-perception in the UK and Bulgaria are beyond any discussion.
As a “Blue coalition” candidate said to me (I’ll post the interview here soon) - “The federalist project for Europe gives Brussels more influence over our unconsolidated democracy.”