Living standards in Bulgaria are the lowest in Europe. Not that this fact is anything new to the powers that be or to the public, to the trade unions or to political parties. Depending on the ideologies and economic beliefs favoured, the politicians that have been at the helm these past 30 years have tried, with varying degrees of success, to take steps to raise the incomes of Bulgarians and improve their quality of life. Some upheld the neoliberal thesis that each shall receive what they have earned. Others, mostly from the left wing, harped on the need to help more people by giving them more public funds and assistance.

Recent years saw two governments with Prime Minister Boyko Borissov, leader of the right-of-centre GERB party. The economic and financial policy of these two governments left no room for doubt that he is a proponent of the purest forms of market relations on the labour market – i.e. less state interference in the social sphere. Yet, several expensive projects have taken centre stage – projects for building motorways, roads, gas pipelines and gas connections, all kinds of infrastructure projects that sucked up the bulk of state financing. The socially disadvantaged, the poor, the sick and the elderly will have nothing good to say of their living standards during the years of the two Boyko Borissov cabinets.

But the fact that most Bulgarians have been growing poorer and poorer ultimately affected the results of the November presidential elections in the country, when to the surprise of the administration, sociologists and political analysts alike, victory went to socialist-supported Rumen Radev. This energized the socialist party and inflated its ambitions for the upcoming early parliamentary elections. On the other hand it was an indication that whatever the benefits of Borissov’s infrastructure projects, Bulgarians “do not eat asphalt” as his critics have been saying.

The campaign for the parliamentary elections in the country has not officially been kickstarted. Yet both leading parties – the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and GERB – have already served voters their election programmes – economic and social – and there doesn’t seem to be much of a different between the two. If one takes the time to read them, one would think that the hardships of the poverty-stricken Bulgarians are almost over and that soon, there will be money raining from the sky that will significantly boost pensions and salaries in the public sector, compensations and assistance for the most vulnerable.

The fundamental contradiction that lies behind this ostensible consensus by the political rivals is whether to spend the enormous reserves accumulated by the state and the constant budget surplus on the people or the asphalt, figuratively speaking. The trade unions are adamant they want the money to go to the households, employers are firmly against pouring public funds into the construction of gargantuan infrastructure projects.

What the outcome of the early elections in March will be, nobody would venture to predict because surveys show a margin-of-error difference between the BSP and GERB. One thing is clear, however – a left-wing tide has been rising that is more socially oriented, more sensitive of the problems of the man in the street. Unfortunately, this is not the first time we have seen this happen, and when the socialists took power on the crest of such a tidal wave the last time, they made a colossal botch up. Far from contributing anything to easing social inequality, they actually made the rich richer and the poor – poorer, as many analysts say.

English version: Milena Daynova