By a tradition, the new session of the 43^rd National Assembly opened with declarations by the parties represented in parliament. GERB and the Reformist Bloc concurred on the subject of constitutional amendments, reforms in the judiciary and the security sector. The Patriotic Front declared it would demand stricter measures against petty crime and amendments to the election laws. The Alternative for Bulgarian Revival – ABV - stated its support for the pension reform. Being in opposition, the Bulgarian Socialist Party was critical of “broken promises” whereas the Movement for Rights and Freedoms warned that the administration must stop with the national populism. Tsvetan Tsvetanov, chair of the GERB parliamentary group called on the MPs not to use parliament for political campaigning. On behalf of the Reformists, Radan Kunev explained there was no way the approaching local elections can be avoided in the coming months.

In an interview for Radio Bulgaria, two political analysts, Dr. Boris Popivanov lecturer at the St. Kliment Ohridski University, Sofia and Dr. Kiril Avramov, lecturer at New Bulgarian University explain what they expect of the new session of parliament.

“My expectations are moderately optimistic,” says Kiril Avramov. “There is no news to speak of, unless it is the zeal with which the Reformist Bloc has been trying to return to familiar territory and raise the most important, the most painful problems. In view of the coming elections, these problems will probably be stricken off the agenda for the sake of the stability we seem to hold so dear. So, this political season will above all be dominated by a reshuffle, to put it bluntly, or keeping the balance before the coming elections.”

“The forthcoming elections are really and truly a factor, in the light of which we shall be assessing the actions of the political forces more and more often, though they will render this more and more difficult,” says on his part Boris Popivanov. “The new session of the National Assembly will be the last one during which we shall be able to discuss anything other than elections. I am not sure to what an extent the parties will be able to do this. The stability and shared objectives in the administration, declared so many times by GERB and the Reformist Bloc, have been declared once too often to make them convincing. Because it is the indispensable reform in the judiciary – a top priority - that has given rise to so many uncertainties. In the past weeks we have witnessed so many and chaotic initiatives by the administration, coming primarily from Prime Minister Boyko Borissov but not only, that neither the public nor observers are any clearer as to the purpose of the judicial reform. Since the very outset, Minister Hristo Ivanov has had a set of fairly clear ideas and concepts which he presented but over time they became more and more hazy, reaching a point when GERB would be submitting some draft or other and then withdrawing it. We are left with the impression that the prime minister is not particularly willing to have this reform set in motion, even though he has been saying it will happen and there will be amendments to the constitution.”

Even though we heard ideas expounded in parliament on how the administration should develop, what we did not hear from any politician was how to regain public trust.

“The credibility vested in the people seen as an embodiment of the protests can be formulated as “the citizenship against the mafia”,” Kiril Avramov says. “One of the first things Radan Kunev from the Reformist Bloc said was that if need be this would be a short term of office, but with shock reforms. What I would like to see is a return to this plane because we may well see these issues replaced by others because of the coming elections.”

“I am not getting the impression that the ruling parties are so concerned with this kind of civic intolerance, whose threshold is now much higher compared to two years ago; now the public is tolerant of things it then deemed inadmissible,” says Boris Popivanov. “Now that elections are approaching the primary issue is not whether citizens will stand up against the mafia but to win more seats for mayors and municipal councilors. So, the parties will have to interact with leading factors locally, though not all of them have a clean record.”

English Milena Daynova