In Brussels, Rumen Radev’s landslide win in Bulgaria’s parliamentary election has fuelled fears that Russia will have a new ally inside the European Union. At home, however, hopes are rising of an alliance with reformists to overhaul the much-maligned judiciary.
Svetoslav Todorov
Bulgarians are having a ‘then and now’ moment, a feeling of one era ending and another beginning.
Not since 1997 has a single party won a majority of seats in a parliamentary election. Never has a president quit early, cobbled together a political party and conquered in a general election a few weeks later.
A former air force commander, Rumen Radev is rewriting the political rulebook. And while Progressive Bulgaria’s thumping victory on Sunday has left Europe guessing as to the country’s future position vis-à-vis Russia, for Bulgarians, more importantly, it has opened the door to a long-awaited overhaul of the judicial system.
Sweeping 44.5 per cent of the popular vote and 131 of parliament’s 240 seats, Progressive Bulgaria tore chunks off all other parties and pushed some, including the once-mighty Bulgarian Socialist Party, out of parliament altogether.
With an overwhelming mandate for change, Radev’s party signalled it would move quickly to replace Bulgaria’s acting prosecutor general, Borislav Sarafov, and members of the Supreme Judicial Council.
“We have to dismiss Borislav Sarafov immediately; he doesn’t have the legitimacy to occupy this position”, Progressive Party official and former interim interior minister Ivan Demerdzhiev told bTV on Monday.
“People who have been infiltrated in the system, who are politically dependent, must step down and give way to people with moral and professional integrity.”
Such a move requires a super-majority of 160, but analysts say the reformist alliance of We Continue the Change and Democratic Bulgaria – which won 37 seats – will likely join the charge.
