Since former Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov declared to the media last week that he was planning to launch a new political party, he has been trying to clarify his intentions. Talking to the Bulgarian National Television last night he summed up that the main goal of the new party would be to liberate Bulgaria and its institutions from the “plague of corruption” which was weakening them. There is strong interest in the new, still not constituted party among the wider public, and also in the political circles. It is only normal, as the new group plans to take part in the snap parliamentary elections next year.

As a token of interest and good will the event for announcing the new project on Friday was attended by the leader of Demоcrats for a Strong Bulgaria Radan Kanev, the former presidential contender of the Reformist Bloc Traicho Traikov, MP Martin Dimitrov, representatives of DEOS, the Movement for European Unification and Solidarity, and by some famous protesters in the recent years. The project’s author Hristo Ivanov has encouraged this interest by stating that based on the idea of the supremacy of law, the new party will cooperate with other political groups. However, it will not be open to all of them, because Mr Ivanov, who was Justice Minister in the government of the party GERB but resigned, argues that GERB has had ten years to prove it can deal with corruption and should now begin a process of catharsis. For this and other reasons GERB does not like Ivanov either and accepts him as someone who is close to the so-called „circle of the lamb heads“, made up of people with dubious political and public reputation. The Socialists have also shown reserves though more moderate to Ivanov’s project and have patronizingly remarked that there is not a political force in the country which has not declared its will to fight corruption.

Reserves and even open dislike to the project has been voiced by some representatives of the legal circles. Some members of the Supreme Judicial Council seen as being close to Prosecutor General Sortir Tsatsarov have noted that the day of announcing the new political project coincided with the protest of judges outside the Supreme Judicial Council. Therefore they claim that given that Hristo Ivanov has until recently been a strongly politicized magistrate, he has ended up as a politician. This view though is not shared by the magistrates from the Supreme Judicial Council who similar to Ivanov oppose the status quo. There are strong sentiments against the status quo among the wider public as well. This was made clear at the latest presidential elections when tens of thousands of adherents of the ruling party GERB and of the rightwing Reformist Bloc voted for leftwing candidate Rumen Radev. Obviously, in case the main cause of the future political party is neither left nor right, it will have strong chances to win wide support. This support however will depend not only on its political platform but also on its first steps after it has been founded. There is little time left to the snap parliamentary elections and this might become the largest stumbling block in the way of the political project announced by Hristo Ivanov.

English Daniela Konstantinova