If you witness what the ruling parties are doing within government structures, you might stop voting and start preparing to emigrate. Sadly the media won't show it cuz there will be riots.
Bulgaria is geographically in the Balkans, but it is something of a former Soviet state. The Russians call us 16 republics of the USSR, which today is the 51st state of the United States
Imo someone that can vote but doesn’t has no right to complain about the result. I live in a country that doesn’t have fair elections but we get much higher turnout than 40%
It's always those that are the most upset. It's ridiculous. Imo if you didn't vote you don't have the right to complain. If you hate them all vote blank.
No excuse to not vote when you've got proportional representation. I live under FPTP and have never lived in a competitive constituency, so at least I'd have an excuse.
If only you knew, I am a teacher and voting is done in schools, can you guess who does all the work before the voting commisions take their spots on election day?
@@orthodox-mp6hvIm from the neighbouring country of Serbia and here voting has to be done in schools too. Its still weird to me even though a lot of countries do that.
What do you expect from one of the only countries where people with ties to the soviet rule while bulgaria was in the eastern block are still allowed to rule. Things were rigged against us before a ton of us were even born
Major error in the video: according to the Bulgarian constitution, if the first and second parties fail to form a government, the president gives the mandate to another party of his choosing, not necessarily the third one.
@@HriStorm_56 I doubt that. Third are Revival and nobody wants to work with them. Fourth is Delyan Peevski, who stole DPC for himself and also nobody wants to work with him. Fifth are BSP witch are a possibility. Sixth are the original DPC, but it's still unlikely to choose them. Seventh are ITN who are also a possibility, if only they had higher %. And there is no point continuing to the last one, because they barely crossed the threshold.
@@ivayloyankov9905 he has in his previous appointments always chosen the third party, so as to not cause further havoc on an already dire situation. Its a sort of unwritten rule.
Peevski has people in the prosecutor’s office, in the police and security service and holds many judges up his sleeve. He technically holds the law. Any trial that is brought up, he can simply swipe under the rug and any trial he starts against someone is addressed immediately. It doesn’t matter what legislation our country passes, when the people responsible for acting on it and interpreting it are working for a single person. He holds information against the leading party’s main people, which was exposed when pictures of Boiko Borisov’s bedroom were leaked, when he was PM. Something, that can not happen without the involvement of the police and secret services, which, as previously stated, ARE HIS PEOPLE. So, he basically controls the majority party under the table. On top of that, he constantly talks about supporting Ukraine, integrating with western energy infrastructure, adopting the euro and all other pro-western politics, so the EU leaves him alone and doesn’t bat an eye on the shitstorm he created in his country. In conclusion, we are on a path to become an authoritarianship and the west is none the wiser about it. Talk about this. Bring it to light. Because Peevski and BB are throwing dust in the eyes of the west and masking how bad things really are, while they are the ones who intentionally caused it and are seeking to seize power. Why are you not mentioning any of this, which is public knowledge here?
To be fair, this is something that Bulgarians should address internally and not expect a helping hand from other EU states. Yes, Peevski is a dangerous individual. But you cannot prevent him from running for office unless he is prosecuted and sentenced. As such, the best approach should be to vote him out, but it seems like a considerable proportion of the electorate doesn't care about his background. The EU will not really care what happens in Bulgaria as long as Revival doesn't come to power. Then it will start asking questions and taking measures. Until then, if things are calm from their perspective and Bulgaria does not interrupt or be a liability in decision making at Brussels, then they won't really make any effort.
@@Kalimdor199Menegroth Technically speaking, it should be like that indeed. But the most important issue that actually keeps those people in power is the corruption and influence that they hold in the country. There is quite a big problem in Bulgaria with buying and selling of votes. Some people in Bulgaria, especially the poor and undereducated and other marginalised groups in society in smaller population centres and rural areas have seen more benefit in just taking the money being offered to them (by the mafia) as opposed to actually voting in accordance to their beliefs and waiting for the promised changes that never come. Here, corruption makes a big difference as, as you all suspect, buying and selling of votes is illegal, but corruption makes it very easy for these crimes to just be swept under the rug. TLDR: The main problems that makes it difficult for Bulgaria to fix its political crisis are the omnipresent corruption and voter disillusionment and apathy, which are both creating a negative feedback loop, perpetuating the crisis and the country's problems.
Just for reference, if everything was going normally, 8 elections would be held in 32 years, not 4. And these 8 are only the Parliamentary elections. In the past 4 years there have also been elections for President, Local elections for mayors and European Parliament elections.
Sounds nice. Presidentialism could help if you are really tiree of so many elections, but it could be much worse. Hungary has a shitty electoral system and you see the what results in. Too many elections is maybe the best problem to have
@@StanAbelHU our current president is a child of communism and doesnt hide his biases toward current russian "democracy". so we first have to get rid of him.
@@pungkaww ur country is the worst place i ever visited so u are right to live abroad. ur country doesn't even have pavements. straight to 2024 from Stone Age 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I wonder how they let this country into the eu
Delyan Peevski has an approval rating of 2% (not net approval, only 2% of all Bulgarians like him), yet he got 11.5% of the vote. I try to vote as much as possible but how can you possibly believe these results? A solid 1/5 of the vote is probably either purchased or controlled. As much as I believe it's a citizen's duty to vote I can definitely sympathise with people who don't believe the process will yield any positive results.
@@gohanssj48 I understand what you say but here in Bulgaria im going to try to explain the situation as clear as possible, Delyan Peevski is KNOWN for buying votes, people are getting caught but they are just a fraction of all the people that also arent, medias go to areas mostly of gypsies and turkish-bulgarians(the people who sell their votes the most) and ask them why do they vote and im dead serious they are honest and say that they are getting paid. Its not about what people want, its knows in Bulgaria that votes are being bought, yet the law enforcment is corrupt by the same people that buy votes.
It's pretty simple - dividing DPS means dividing all its structures, so Dogan gets structure leader X, Peevski Y. And both local structures leaders work to get votes for their party. And Peevski's party also took the initials of the old party, so it's pretty simple and logical, but it takes critical thinking - the opposite of what the political PRs are writing on social media.
6:54 Bulgarian here. That information is partly incorrect. YES, the second attempt goes to the second largest party in the parliament, BUT THE THIRD/LAST ATTEMPT is given to the president and he chooses one of the other parties that entered the parliament to form a government. If that party fails - yet again new elections
Hey, Native Bulgarian who's in his late 20s here, I voted a couple of times but young people are sick and tired of all this political mess. The older generations and institutions have failed many young people, especially in various fields (ex: health, mental health awareness), while younger people will find solace in each other and have some crutch, it's only temporary as many young people just flee abroad for better opportunities. Those who stay here either feel nihilistic or hopeless, that no matter who we choose the same scenario will run again as it has been for 30+ years this far. The older generations don't make it any easy especially since they continue to complain and fault us for their misdeeds in the past. While yes, I agree that young people here could change the political landscape but we'll only be met with suppression and media slander. Or worse aggravating assaults. TLDR: This whole mess is OUR COUNTRY'S fault, not Russia's, Not Nato's.
Agreed. Look at the poles, they got their shot straight in no time of for countries with less people, the Croats for example. And as for the voting. I turned 18 3 years ago, i just didn't vote this time and joked with my parents that I'll vote in the next one a few months later, cuz i don't see a parliament forming any time soon
The situation is even worse over here in Macedonia. Not only is corruption skyrocketing, but they make it look like its Greece or Bulgaria's fault for our inability to enter the EU. The country doesnt even want to get better, it just wants to enter the EU, and on what account? Nobody knows... The balkans are hopeless, its sad that we have to move abroad, but even being a stranger in a foreign country offers more opportunities than rotting in your own corrupt home.
@donkeyhot5475 I heard about the stuff there, honestly nobody's stopping N.Macedonia from joining the EU, it's just the governments and old generational hatred that tears the Balkans apart with corruption and greedy liars we call politics. As a Zoomer Bulgarian, I don't see a point hating anybody in the Balkans - sure we can have history jabs but why seethe and hate when all of us are stuck in a loop that only a few can get out?
@@ianvidelov156dude, before you vetoed our ass for the last 6,7 years. The french pussy Macron did it two times, before handing the task to you. Greece did it for 30 years .. Saying that we dont get blocked is slander, and our dumb politicians use the eu excuse since i know and get nothing done. Now 300 bulgarians voted for the election and we are supposed to place them in the constitution, which will be only start for bickering. I dont hate bulgarians, but your politicians really make it hard not to do so. We are really making life way harder, fck up future for what ? Debating history 😢 its sad. Instead of friendship promoting hate and division. And there is no end in sight. Pozdrav.
As a Bulgarian, I had to watch this recap, simply because I have forgotten what happened in 2021/2022 😆 I used to vote at every election however nothing changes and still, Borisov and Peevski are not in jail where they belong.
@@hlapeto0o What does it mean to deserve "more" to go to jail? You either need to be there or you don't. You either commit a crime or you don't. GERB and DPS ruled for years and years on end. PP-DB didn't even have one full year in government.
Your video missed a lot of detail… 1. The wider coalition between PP, DB, BSP and ITN fell apart because BSP didn’t want to send weapons to Ukraine and ITN didn’t want to continue the legislation that was about to limit the corruption in some gov. bodies such as the national bank etc. 2. The second “coalition” (it’s never been called a coalition in Bulgarian) between PPDB and GERB was because of Ukraine and was based on their pro EU orientation. The deal was for GERB to sign anti corruption laws (which the EU supported) including the changes in the constitution. But GERB obviously didn’t want that so when it was their term to have Maria Gabriel as a PM she suggested some random corrupt names to become her ministers without agreeing this with Nikolai Denkov (as previously agreed). So they used this so withdraw from the “coalition” and therefore not sign any anti corruption laws. 3rd. The high court didn’t accept the new changes of the constitution saying that they are illegal. Which is nonsense as the EU supported them. Indicating that the court is corrupt. 4th Peevski works side by side with Boyko Borisov and he broke the DPS party (which relies on the ethnic Turkish people for support) into two. Recen studies/research show that less than 2% of the population likes Peevski. There are also loads of video footage from the last elections where it’s very clear that people who should be counting the votes are actually adding votes for Peevski. It’s estimated that he spent over 150 million levs to buy himself votes. There is so much more
Sure, buddy, PPDB wasn't in a coalition with GERB and Peevski... Keep making excuses for them. "The high court didn’t accept the new changes of the constitution saying that they are illegal." All of the changes in the constitution were garbage, the only reason some of them were not branded illegal is that PPDB voted Desislava Atanasova in the court.
For reference: The Weimar Republic, known for its highly unstable politics and many elections, held arguably between 7 to 9 elections (depending on if you count the inital 1919 national assembly election and the already no longer free election of March 1933) throughout its entire roughly 15 year long history. Bulgaria has somehow reached this number of elections in less than a third of that time. 😮
@@lightningstrike5024 Parliamentary elections, not presidential ones. There were only 3 presidential elections throughout that time (the president back then was directly elected), with Hindenburg winning two of these.
If you wonder why at 5:40 he says "record 9 parties", when the graph shows 8, it's because a small, super populist part was about to pass the 4% barrier, but at the end the election committee calculated their score - 3.999% - and I'm not kidding. :D and for all these record number of elections in the past couple of years, we've spent ... 500,000,000 EUR :(
That means ~50% are complete idiots, because the country has a government. What we're voting for is Parliament. We don't have a Parliament at the moment, not a government. Bulgaria has a government at all times - if not one voted by a Parliament, then a caretaker one appointed by a chosen caretaker PM.
Maybe some more federalism could help? Belgium has similar problems with forming a federal government, albeit for different reasons and pretty much for most of their existence (They still haven't got a government since the June election, Bulgaria even organized another election since then). And I've heard people say similar things about Belgium. But as opposed to Bulgaria, the regions, namely Brussels, Flanders & Waloonia (+ the German-speaking community) have their own parliaments & governments with considerable powers which run smoothly most of the time. I suppose corruption would still persist, but any government at all (likely PP-led in cities and GERB-led in more rural provinces, if I had to guess) is better than nothing.
@@TzvetozarCherkezov yeah the council of ministers, the defacto ruling part of the country for the last 4 years, and they are the once that accept all parliamentary nominations and configuration before being inacted, and actually yeah i too thing we are better without parliament, but only if the government is doing their job and are not corrupt
as long as the economy is doing fine (which it is at the moment), people don't care about elections, the government, corruption, etc. but once the money runs out, people will rise. the last really big protests in 1997 were triggered by hyperinflation and things did change back then, we're a much better country thanks to this. so I hope that one day (probably soon) when all this corruption really starts affecting regular people (as in we get dirt poor again) the axe will come for Peevski and Borisov. this is how it is here, we have to be pushed to the brink of collapse to really start working as a society. otherwise we care mostly that we have food on the table, those high road values like rule of law, justice, freedom are too abstract for most people, unless their lack results in a total collapse.
30 yeard old bulgarian here. I forgot how many times I voted. I even visited the parlament on a school feild trip. The goverment treats peoole horribly if you want to be smart, ambitious, educated. It treats you great if you are just want to be unitressted, loyal worker. The Inteligencia/artist is always the one to suffer
While this is a big reason for talented and smart people to leave the country, it is also an issue that's noticeable on international competitions or exhibitions - the Bulgarian representatives are almost always participating on their own, without any financial help from the state, and sometimes even "despite" the state. The media doesn't even reflect on our successes. How are we supposed to be proud of ourselves when we don't even know just how many good things we are putting out into the world? How are we supposed to make an image for ourselves when all higher-ups deny the possibility of official international representation because it's a "useless waste of money"? This applies to the technical, sports, education and many other fields.
As a Bulgarian I think Peevski should be removed at any cost, as he seems not to care about anything except his own political power. Plus, we shouldn't ignore the fact how little of the population actually votes - a meagre 30%.
Малко хора осъзнават, че в бананова република гласуването е безсмислено. Много българи се държат така сякаш гласуват за президент на САЩ като се заговори за избори... Изборите в държави като България са Clown fiesta. Вместо да гласувате научете да правите нещо освен да говорите счупен английски от много холивудски филми...
bullshit , there are very few countries with ths much elections , that means that none of the parties are interested in developing Bulgaria , everyone wants the government for their own benefits
Borisov and Peevski still have a tight grip on the small towns and counties. Most of the mayors are from GERB or DPS; they easily force the locals into voting for the party: "winter is coming, and if you want access for firewood, you'll vote for us". Peevski holds the "purchased vote", i.e. giving money for votes, mostly within the ever-growing Roma ghettos. Overall, to have a real impact, these two factors need to be eliminated, and it won't happen. Yeah, the cities can vote for others, but Bulgaria is not just Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas.
Cool video, as usual, but there are a few inaccuracies I think are important to be pointed out: 1) At 1:21 where you show the corruption index chart, BG is featured twice. The real BG is second to last, that's out of question, but there is one more at 9th place. I believe that's Belgium, which is BE. 2) At 5:39 your graph abbreviates the last party's name as MECh, which looks kind of odd. In Bulgarian, their abbreviation means SWORD, so it's kind of like SHIELD from the Marvel Universe, they're going for that effect probably. But in Bulgarian we represent the "ch" sound with only one letter, so I get the abbreviation in English, it just looks weird. I see you've decided to take the Bulgarian abbreviations and transliterate them in order to have a unified standard, which I support. They also sound cooler this way, rather than translating the abbreviations. Maybe except for PP. But in some cases exceptions are preferred and I think SWORD is one of them. This also better explains their logo and their political orientation. 3) At 5:45 you say 9 parties enter the parliament, which is not true, as you can also see on your graph earlier - it's 8. It was thought to be true on the day of the election, but the 9th party - "Greatness" remained with 3,999% of the votes. The protocols were recalculated because of this and it turned out that just 21 votes were not enough for them to enter. This is kind of the main topic of this election, since the party was the surprise of the pervious election, and its current leader is connected to a lot of pyramid scheme complaints related to his many businesses. 4) You mentioned the split in DPS, but not the reason. And that was the main pre-election topic. Also there are protests now that call for the abolishment of the election results, but they all come from different groups and for different reasons. The PP supporters accuse DPS-NN for election fraud and vote buying. The "Greatness" supporters are unhappy for obvious reasons and also see election fraud behind it. Given that this crisis is nowhere near to being solved, even if a government is formed somehow after this election, you might need to consider having a Bulgarian on your team. And it's not like I haven't sent you an application, but maybe you haven't seen it. Granted, not from this profile, but I'm sure you can find it, if you look for it. 😉
Great video. You previous coverage on Bulgaria were quite shallow and seemed to be made in haste. This one is different though. Thank you for providing the most detail in 8 minutes or so. Looking forward to more videos on Bulgaria.
All you need to know is that Peefski is а successor of Multigroup, along with Dogan, and Borisov is former bodyguard of Zhivkov, former leader of People Republic of Bulgaria. Everything else are nuances
GERB - Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (in bulgarian) PP ;) - We continue the change (Produlzawame Promqnata) DB - Democratic Bulgaria Revival - Popular term (Wuzrazdhane) that historically addresses how bulgarians became once again proud of their ethnicity and were motivated to fight Ottoman rule MECh - Litreally means Sword and is an acronym for unity moral and honor or something like that Greatness - (Velichie) DPS - Turkish minority party that was basically coupled into a GERB-alligned corrupt party due to the new leader APS - THE ACTUAL turkish party that split form the DPS cause its leader is corrupt and doesn't even represent turks (he himself is a Bulgarian) BSP - Bulgarian Socialist Party Also fun fact, every party has PP next to their name, cuz it means ''Political Party''
Oh, you haven't even seen one bit of it. There are ones like "Russofiles for Bulgaria", whom I respect for being so honestly anti-Bulgaria straight from the name. As a person who recently started voting it fells like every option is more ridiculous than the last. ( I say that, because from my research they want to sell-out the entire country to Russia, which may not be entirely true as nowadays I can't trust any news source. In conclusion, do not take my opinion as fact, as it is subject to change if I am given better information from a credible source.)
I think it's apparent that 60-70% of Bulgarians are fine with this arrangement of celebrating a national election every trimester, I deduce that mostly from the fact that NOBODY showed up to the polls. I suggest an improvement to be made: hand over the elections to a random number generator algorithm, that way we can save ourselves the trouble of going physically to the polls in the first place, whatever result it spits out will be with the same accuracy as the average Bulgarian voter.
Dude, if you don't live in Bulgarian and you really don't know what is going on in the country, your suggestions are useless. We need smth like operation "Clean Hands" - cleaning all of the corrupted politics and ppl in all government institutions. Other wise we'll get the same bs next few years no matter how many ppl are voting.
As a regular Bulgarian viewer of this channel, I am simultaneously glad and ashamed. While I think more outside attention is needed for what is becoming a very protracted political crisis, at the same time bringing to light the level of political and leadership incompetence and corruption for the world to see is really sad. FYI, one major potential development that is expected in the next one or two years is that after President Radev's second and last legal mandate expires, he will most likely form a party and try to shake up the status-quo. The problem is, that's prolonging the period of instability even further.
I think somebody needs to make a series based on the politilac situation in Bulgaria. Things are so dynamic and absurd that they will have material for at least 10 seasons
It's like a soap opera, it's amusing at first but as the episodes go by you begin to feel odd, when enough time passes you realise that what you are feeling is deep disgust.
Nothing as it seems in Bulgaria: parties, leaders, policies and in a way they do not matter. What matters is the war in Ukraine which determines everything else. 90 % of the Bulgarian elite comes from the old communist nomenclature and the all powerful secret police apparatus which was effectively a local branch of the Soviet KGB. Literary everything in Bulgaria was decided by Moscow and the decisive factor for success was the direct link to Kremlin. After 1989 Bulgaria the local elite applied the Russian oligarchic model to the full with a bit more colourful party life. When Putin became president in the early 2000s he opened Russia to the West and Bulgaria did that too joining NATO and EU. Bulgaria became a bridge between Russia and the EU where both invested and had strong control: Russia holding 90 % of gas, oil, nuclear and coal supplies and facilities and the West having the retail and industrial sector. Borissov and his GERB party are full of former army and police people and despite the rhetoric kept the oligarchic and corruption system in tact feeding it up with EU money. Borissov was a former mafia guy and was the bodyguard of the long serving communist leader of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov fully loyal to the generals of the Bulgarian DS/KGB. In 20 years they became enormously rich and control the media, the judicial system and the prosecutor office plus the security agency DANS. Most of the other parties have the same origin and structure. Different names, same corporation and shareholders. Corruption thrives but it is protected vigorously by the judiciary and security services plus parties like DPS, ITN, BSP and quasi patriots of Vazrazhdane. Hence, the only option left is street protests. They erupted several times but each time the KGB elite created new parties which when voted in power did exactly nothing. The genuine opposition parties are small, have no funding and no media, and are powerless against the combined onslaught of all other parties plus all media plus direct intervention by the security agency and the judiciary which do everything to destroy it. So Borissov and DPS win but lack legitimacy because they block all measures against corruption. Europe insists so Borissov promises and then plays a game of trying but not succeeding to reform anything. And then in 2022 came the war in Ukraine. The Bulgarian KGB elite was torn in two: it depends on Russia for its money, protection and business but lives the EU money and does not want them to stop. The double game they were playing for 20 years became impossible. Putin insists on direct support in the style of Orban, Brussels had sponsored and supported Borissov for very long time ignoring his antics but now demanded loyalty. Under pressure from the US, GERB-DPS-BSP did support a minority government by the reformist opposition. They proclaimed support for Ukraine publicly but privately waged a war against the pro-Ukraine government and slowed down its actions as much as they could. Then found a reason the toppled them altogether. This was their solution to the Moscow-Brussels dilemma. We cannot chose and will not chose. Putin kills the trailers, Brussels talks a lot but is not nearly as dangerous. So - how to stop support for Ukraine? By having no government and no responsibilities. By calling election after election in promising everything to Brussels when the are done and then… calling another one. It is a waiting game. The moment one of the two sides wins they will form a government. If Trump wins: old Russian style kleptocracy will return with vengeance led by Borissov, DPS, ITN, BSP and whoever else they chose. If Kamala Harris wins, Borissov will make his n-teeth pseudoreformist government and pay lip service to supporting Ukraine. Either way, Russian interests, money, ties will remain in tact waiting for better times to come on the surface
Bulgaria has not had a pro-Russian government since a gypsy Kostov,, became prime minister and purged the administration.The transition in Bulgaria failed and now Solomon Passy ordered all the media in Bulgaria to write that the "communists" are to blame for the failure, which is not true.
This is not true and is complete nonsense. The Bulgarian media and the Bulgarian services were controlled by the Clinton clan. Kiril Petkov's government fell because there was a recording in which he said that the head of DANS was coordinated with the American embassy.
Some but not all problems can be summarized as follows: 1. Borisov refused to leave politics after the protests and when his party was defeated numerous times, likely out of fear of being investigated under the new regime. 2. Anti western, pro Russian sentiment and foreign interference (mostly Russian). The problem here is that most people are pro EU and NATO yet still have some reservations about both alliances. This makes it impossible to gather around pro Russian parties because you cannot square the circle of being anti West while participating in every Western institution but also walking on eggshells of people that have a growing sense of Western identity. 3. Voter fatigue. People don't take elections seriously because they know they'll be new elections again in 4 months. 4. General disillusionment. We were supposed to be in Schengen and the Euro zone 15 years ago yet here we are. Many infrastructure projects as well as rule of law bills were promised and nothing. People vote on vibes because they don't actually believe that anything else really makes any difference. I don't think there's anything that can solve this mess, however increasing the threshold of getting into parliament can help by making it possible to create coalitions with less parties and this potentially more stable. Getting rid of the most outrageous politicians can also help.
2. Why don't we conduct referendums about NATO, EU, Eurozone and Schengen and test your claim :) What other way do you suggest to resolve that obvious dispute between the poeple? 3. People are tired to set aside 30 mins - 1h to vote 2 times a year. In other word people are tired to set aside 2 hours in the span of 365 days. Foegive ne, but this is absule nonsense :) A referendum on every debatable topic is the only way to unite and solve this crisis. It's a bit strange That the "democrats" are against such referendum, instead they want to impose their stance on the other 93% of the society :)
@@Paddington-officialwhy do I even try to answer to a bot, but here I go, wasting time again: 1. Referendums are a historically unreliable metric to measure a public s opinion, see Brexit for an example, where many people didn't participate because they thought it was a done deal and fools like Boris Johnson went galvanizing the public and spreading lies and misinformation about eu regulation, British funding, etc. This happened in a developped democracy, imagine what would happen in ours. 2. Voting is not simply taking 30 minutes and going with your day, although many authoritarians believe it is such. It is about placing your trust in someone and holding them accountable when they don't act like they have promised in short it is about responsibility and accountability and when the person you've trusted so many times fails you again and again, how can you in good conscious vote for them without feeling like a fool and nobody wants to be a fool.
@@Paddington-official Holding referendum about EU? If people vote to leave EU, are they ready to return all the billions of euros that Europe has been giving Bulgaria for infrastructure for all those decades?
@@Cappuccino17 1. The referendum is about re-defining our membership terms because right now Bulgarian agriculture, business, education etc. are suffering badly. So, not leaving but re-defining membership terms :) 2. As you probably don't know every EU member has a membership fee. In Bulgaria's case this is 2.5 billion euros. For the last couple of years Bulgaria received less money than it gave to EU. ------------ Get your fact rights, dude :)
same, all i know at this point is that bulgaria is suffering, parliament is corrupt, the people have no money to live anymore, everyone is stressed and tired...
The problem is our legislation. We don't have a threshold for the elections to be considered valid. Even if a single person casts their vote, the elections would be considered valid. But yes, there is no excuse for not voting, I also think if you don't vote, you have no right to complain. I haven't missed an election ever since I have the right to vote.
In short: After the USSR fall Bulgaria was governed by spinoffs of the communist party disguised in different forms. They clinged to the judicial system at all levels and benefited from corruption especially after EU funds poured in. What is happening now is that the population does not want them anymore. The fact that all other factions attack PP all day long indicates that they are probably clean. However, the voters does not want to vote them in with majority. However, they are gatekeepers now, because apparently the other formations cannot form government because of who know what dependencies.
The dudes in this clip are by trade: Professor Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Harvard Business School alumni, firefighter and ex-fighter pilot. Guess which two of them are Prime minister and President of Bulgaria and you will figure out yourselves what's wrong with this country?
Yeah, Harvard business school alumni, who is known for his business with nutritional supplements and photoshoping those supplements on an Opra magazine, claiming it was legit 😂 Also let's not forget how he lied to 7 million people, claiming he forfeited his Canadian citizenship to comply with Bulgarian laws... Also, coming to power on anti-establishment platform only to rule later with the same mafia boys.
Something else that explains the low turnout is that the country is not so divided on social policy, so the main differences between the parties are economic and personal. Bulgaria is divided but it’s nothing like the west in general so there isn’t a sense that if the other side wins there would be hell on earth, just bad. It’s a very poor, but safe and tolerant place with no hate between the Turkish and Bulgarian ethnicities.
@captainvanisher988 it's not that simple. Parliaments are always undemocratic, since they destroy the core principle of democracy that everybody can chose and be chosen. Politics should be banned in every democracy
Both of the governments in the past 4 years were led by PP (We Continue the Change). Both were voted out as soon as the anti-corruption laws were about to be looked at in the parliament. No surprises there.
5:43 We'll have 8 parties in parliament, just like the graph shows. We could have had a 9th party, but Величие (Greatness) got 3,999% of the votes and was 25 votes short of passing the 4% threshold. Having 9 parties would have been a record, but we had 8 parties in parliament in 2014.
Would be 15, if there wasn’t a Threshold. Velichie = 9 Blue Bulgaria = 2 Bulgarian Rise = 1 Russophiles for Bulgaria = 1 Direct Democracy = 1 People's Voice = 1 Free Voter’s = 1 * None of the Above(Not a Party) = 8 *All of the Remaining Party’s Combined = 2 GERB-SDS (-8) We Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (-4) Revival (-4) DPS-A New Beginning (-3) BSP - United Left (-2) Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (-2) There is Such a People (-2) Morality, Unity, Honour (-1) What you do with the 8 none of the above seats, I guess is leave 8/240 seats in parliament empty, while with the 2 combined seats from all of the other minor party’s, I suppose you can add those 2 seats to the 8 empty seats, to make it 10 empty seats.
Hello! I wasn't aware of your content up until this point, however, I want to congratulate you for this video! Amazing input, as well as very clear and spot-on explanations. As a Bulgarian who follows politics actively, I'd like to mention two minor corrections about some things you said: 1. The President does not pass the third mandate to the third party per se, he can rather choose any other party as the third mandate-holder. There has been a practice from Radev to traditionally prefer ITN as that third party. 2. There are 8 parties in the parliament after the last October elections; however, there is a possibility that Greatness (Velichie; Величие) might somehow get in since they are undergoing some complaint-filing processes to the electoral committees. Nonetheless, a brilliant summary video and analysis. Keep up the good work!
A lot of people in Bulgaria and even out of it refuse to go to vote as even the elections are corrupted. It’s easy to vote for your party but then Borisov always wins. Plus the turnout for voting is lower then needed to declare the elections successful.
Great content. Really concise, accurate and to the point. One correction, though, at 6:57: if the second-largest parliamentary group (PP) fails to form a government, the president has the option to choose to which of the other parliamentary groups to give the mandate. This is not necessarily the third-largest (Revival).
At the end you mentioned that the voting activity has increased. It's safe to assume that it's because of a record in bought votes from Peevski. For a few dozen million euro he basically bought into 4th place.
Hey, I have one minor note to mention here. The president in bulgaria is obligated to ask the first party to form a government, then if the first party is unable to do so the president asks the second party to form a government. And here comes the interesting part. After this the president can choose on which of the remaining parties to give the opportunity to form a government. This process doesn't take all parties. Only those three time. And after this we are going to elections again. I hope I explained it well emough. But apart from this the video is on a really high level. Great job :)
Some of the parties have been talking about a cordon sanitaire against GERB and DPS by forming a 7 party government, which would have a majority. However, such a government would obviously be extremely unstable, and I highly doubt that such an agreement would even come to fruition. I just wish that a technocratic government is formed for at least 3 years so politics can come back to normal, but alas it probably won't happen.
There is no way to implement it, because the "Vazrazhdane" party (which is the 3rd political force) will not support a government if a referendum on not joining the Eurozone is not held, a "law on foreign agents" is not introduced, a referendum on leaving NATO and renegotiation of the terms of Bulgaria's membership in the EU. All things that the neoliberals from "PPDB" would not accept. And even if "Vazrazhdane" forms a coalition with "PPDB", this will be political harakiri for them. Due to the fact that their voters do not like "PPDB" and accuse them of treason. And the "ITN" and "PPDB" parties would hardly form a coalition with the "MECH" party, because the chairman of "MECH" is a former member of "ITN" and "PPDB" and betrays his former allies, for example, he presented a record of a meeting of " PPDB" in which one of the presidents of the party says: "We will hold the elections with our Ministry of the Interior" and "We have coordinated the changes in the security services with the embassy (it is assumed that it is the American embassy)"
A few small corrections: PP actually formed a coalition with DB in 2023 so now they are PP-DB The president can pass the 3rd mandate to any party, not that it matters much in this context but in some situations it can be very important. Other than that this was a pretty nice video, I love the Coalition Builder skit :D
@@kmt9337 Bulgaria is a good place to be these days. People are always complaining about things, but there are a lot of problems in Germany, France, the UK, and the US such as emigration policy, poverty, homelessness, etc. You did a great job by moving to Bulgaria, pal 🙂
@@corruptteacher exactly ! Sometimes its sad to see Bulgarian people complaining about their country. Its not perfect of course but its a chance to live in a safe country, with low taxes...
@@kmt9337 I'm super happy that there are people in Bulgaria who actually understand the advantages of living here :D btw taxes aren't low, but considering the taxes you’d have to pay, let's say, in Germany ..... xD
As a Irish citizen I feel so sorry for My Bulgaria friends that they have to deal with this crisis it is clear that corruption is a very serious problem in Bulgaria
and that's a bad thing. in Romania, you have a monstrous coalition between extremely corrupt left and right parties, that seized the power and splits the spoils of "war". they're running a HUGE deficit, borrowing massive amounts of money at extreme rates, raising taxes and impoverishing the population. all that so that they can steal as much money as possible. at least Bulgaria is economically stable, which is FAR more important than political stability.
Recently we’ve been saying stuff like “when you have been voting more times than getting laid you know it’s bad”, “if Peevski joined the American election he would win no questions asked” and yeah the political situation here is awful, also there is very little amount of people voting proportionally speaking
Actually you did not say about buying 300k votes and preventing for one of the party called - Velichie to not enter the parlament because not having 21 votes! When more then 90k voted for it. And there are video prove they have away more then 21 votes which are not recorded on a paper, but were recorded on a video.
A five-person team is unable to provide a thorough analysis of the political situation in Bulgaria, which is commendable. 👏 By the way, the answer to the Bulgarian political crisis can be found at 1:59 in the video.
Have you noticed the difference in how the European Union and the United Kingdom are depicted in videos? While making critical content is okay, treating them one-sided is not cool. The main takeaway from the TLDR is that the EU is seen as having “crises,” while the UK is portrayed as having “explanations.” I wanted to clarify that I’m not trying to be disrespectful or anything like that. I genuinely enjoy your content and have subscribed to all of your channels. However, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with the content you’re putting out there.
As every political topic, this one is also very complex, but I believe you managed to explain the situation well. Thank you for the video about my country!
In the last 10-15 years when we had stable governments things were definitely not normal in the country. In fact since the political turmoil started life has gotten better for a large part of the population. Not to say that there still aren't huge problems with judicial and securty systems but the standart of living on average somehow increased.
In my opinion, the only real solution is to change the electoral system. They could adopt a single-member district system like in the UK, or a two-round single-member district system like in France.
That's not a easy thing to achieve, to change the political system to such a degree you need a constitutional change, that means 2/3 of the parlament must be on board (the Bulgarian can't get 50% of the parties to form a coalition), and that's a very inflamatory issue. Even minor changes are very hard to pass, bcs everyone judges them how they will affect their party.
@pivanov3321 thanks very much for the constitutional information. In many countries the electoral system has designed by the normal laws, not with the constitution. If the electoral system is written and explained in constitution, I don't think that they can change it. As you said, parties wouldn't be reach supermajority in this composition.
It's actually 8 parties. The 9th one didn't get over the 4% of the popular vote threshold. They were 21 votes short. Also the 3rd mandate to form a government is not given to the 3rd placing party. The president decides who to give the mandate to and it can be any single party in the National Assembly.
It is necessary to convene the Great National Assembly (Велико Народно Събрание), which would send the entire mafia to jail, then everything will fall into place.
I do think that you should have paid more attention to the two smallest parties: MECh and Velichie, since their results and the way they emerged are really interesting.
The longer Bulgaria has no government the better. All economic statistics are up. Sofia is a richer capital than most other capital cities of central and eastern Europe. Politicians are busy bickering with each other so they aren't focused on stealing money and corruption.
Limiting the power of the President in such a chaotic political situation is a strategic mistake. The President is perhaps the only one with both a mandate and the ability to function as a referee, and impose a caretaker government, on a political system which is unable to compromise.
Yeah, I am generally against presidents holding significant powers, but presidential system exists to prevent fallout of repeatedly collapsing governments, something that happened all the time historically (Most significantly in interwar France and Poland) and it seems like it's still an issue in Bulgaria for whatever reason
It was a good move to limit the power of the President, but you need some context to understand why. The current Bulgarian president is pro Russia. He overused his powers quite a lot and tried to singelhandedly place Bulgaria as an ally to Russia not the EU and NATO at a crucial point in the Ukraine conflict. That was way beyond his mandate and therefore not legitimate. Bulgarian presidents are not supposed to make those kinds of decisions. As a whole the current president is preying on the political instability to be a de facto prime minister. Also the idea of a semi-presidential system is especially unsuitable for Bulgaria, because it will create even more central power which in Bulgaria is always heavily controlled by the mafia.
No, it’s not. Because first the president Rumen Radev is a Russian spy, second he had too much control over the entire country , because he literally created most of the governments in the last four years, because the parties in parliament failed to make a stable one.
It was a good move to limit the power of the President, but you need some context to understand why. The current Bulgarian president is pro Russia. He overused his powers quite a lot and tried to singelhandedly place Bulgaria as an ally to Russia not the EU and NATO at a crucial point in the Ukraine conflict. That was way beyond his mandate and therefore not legitimate. Bulgarian presidents are not supposed to make those kinds of decisions.
The whole idea for president to choose provisional government was to assure fair elections. But this so called euro parties changed the law in such a way that president must choose between short list of names - every one of which was not only political figure but from leading party which are placed in position by party mandates! This leaded to current provisional premier who was deputy chairman of leading party and was chairman of parliament. It is not a surprise that last election despite lots of videos and evidence for cheating was won once again by former premier party and their allies. And by bulgarian law they can't change results even if there are clear evidence of fake elections.
A bit confusing in the corruption index is that there are two BG's, I'm assuming the 9th from the top is actually Belgium? Wouldn't you normally use BE for Belgium?
![Stromae, Pomme - “Ma Meilleure Ennemie” (from Arcane Season 2) [Official Visualizer]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/1F3OGIFnW1k/mqdefault.jpg)
You know its bad when TLDR is talking about your country
It's bad, when a coalition builder parody comes up
I relate as a lebanese guy
They just did a story about how Ireland has too much money.
Tell me about it. At my polling place the polling workers were saying: "See you again next spring."
Buddy , you know it’s bad when your country for the past four years is unable to form a functioning government and is heading for its 8th election.
I turned 18 this year and I've already voted twice
Making the most out of it I see 😂
Wait until you learn those are regular numbers in the US.
If you witness what the ruling parties are doing within government structures, you might stop voting and start preparing to emigrate. Sadly the media won't show it cuz there will be riots.
We're the most democratic country of them all 💪
I am 36 years old and have never voted.
Bulgaria is so democratic they have 2 elections a year 🥰
Western lies.. we have at least 3🥰
@@kostas0352 Kombajna vrshachka, palamande, troshachka
Не, просто политиците ни имат два повода повече да ни крадът.
Fuck democracy, obviously!
Just makes my hate for the democratic system of governance that much more intense
Most stable Balkan democracy:
not enough time to steal and to make huge deals :D :D
Please tell me that is not real.. i always think our neightbours are better.
Most corrupted Balkan democracy
Yeah reinstate the Monarchy. :D
Bulgaria is geographically in the Balkans, but it is something of a former Soviet state. The Russians call us 16 republics of the USSR, which today is the 51st state of the United States
As a foreigner living in Bulgaria, it is astonishing to me how everyone here complains about the election results yet none of them vote...
Hopelessness
That's the Bulgarian ethos for you 😂
Imo someone that can vote but doesn’t has no right to complain about the result. I live in a country that doesn’t have fair elections but we get much higher turnout than 40%
It's always those that are the most upset. It's ridiculous. Imo if you didn't vote you don't have the right to complain. If you hate them all vote blank.
No excuse to not vote when you've got proportional representation.
I live under FPTP and have never lived in a competitive constituency, so at least I'd have an excuse.
Me as an American: This election can't be over soon enough.
Bulgaria: Hold my kebapche
Ahahaha, I az Obicham Kebapchetata
If only you knew, I am a teacher and voting is done in schools, can you guess who does all the work before the voting commisions take their spots on election day?
Lowkwey is your job so, don't complain @@orthodox-mp6hv
@@orthodox-mp6hvIm from the neighbouring country of Serbia and here voting has to be done in schools too. Its still weird to me even though a lot of countries do that.
Hahahhaha
Sounds like Bulgaria really needs those anti-corruption laws.
We need for Europeans and Americans to stop supporting the mafia - you only care how we support Ukraine, not that we are dying here !
What do you expect from one of the only countries where people with ties to the soviet rule while bulgaria was in the eastern block are still allowed to rule. Things were rigged against us before a ton of us were even born
@@KaloyanKasabov
Bullshit comment
We have them, they are too corrupted to even work lol
it's not the laws only but who applies them.
Major error in the video: according to the Bulgarian constitution, if the first and second parties fail to form a government, the president gives the mandate to another party of his choosing, not necessarily the third one.
It's not major error. It doesn't matter which party, as no one can form a goverment.
Rumen Radev would probably choose the third party
@@HriStorm_56 I doubt that. Third are Revival and nobody wants to work with them. Fourth is Delyan Peevski, who stole DPC for himself and also nobody wants to work with him. Fifth are BSP witch are a possibility. Sixth are the original DPC, but it's still unlikely to choose them. Seventh are ITN who are also a possibility, if only they had higher %. And there is no point continuing to the last one, because they barely crossed the threshold.
@@HriStorm_56 I pretty sure he will not. He will choose probably BSP or ITN.
@@ivayloyankov9905 he has in his previous appointments always chosen the third party, so as to not cause further havoc on an already dire situation. Its a sort of unwritten rule.
Peevski has people in the prosecutor’s office, in the police and security service and holds many judges up his sleeve. He technically holds the law. Any trial that is brought up, he can simply swipe under the rug and any trial he starts against someone is addressed immediately. It doesn’t matter what legislation our country passes, when the people responsible for acting on it and interpreting it are working for a single person. He holds information against the leading party’s main people, which was exposed when pictures of Boiko Borisov’s bedroom were leaked, when he was PM. Something, that can not happen without the involvement of the police and secret services, which, as previously stated, ARE HIS PEOPLE. So, he basically controls the majority party under the table.
On top of that, he constantly talks about supporting Ukraine, integrating with western energy infrastructure, adopting the euro and all other pro-western politics, so the EU leaves him alone and doesn’t bat an eye on the shitstorm he created in his country.
In conclusion, we are on a path to become an authoritarianship and the west is none the wiser about it. Talk about this. Bring it to light. Because Peevski and BB are throwing dust in the eyes of the west and masking how bad things really are, while they are the ones who intentionally caused it and are seeking to seize power. Why are you not mentioning any of this, which is public knowledge here?
To be fair, this is something that Bulgarians should address internally and not expect a helping hand from other EU states. Yes, Peevski is a dangerous individual. But you cannot prevent him from running for office unless he is prosecuted and sentenced. As such, the best approach should be to vote him out, but it seems like a considerable proportion of the electorate doesn't care about his background.
The EU will not really care what happens in Bulgaria as long as Revival doesn't come to power. Then it will start asking questions and taking measures. Until then, if things are calm from their perspective and Bulgaria does not interrupt or be a liability in decision making at Brussels, then they won't really make any effort.
@@Kalimdor199Menegroth Technically speaking, it should be like that indeed. But the most important issue that actually keeps those people in power is the corruption and influence that they hold in the country. There is quite a big problem in Bulgaria with buying and selling of votes. Some people in Bulgaria, especially the poor and undereducated and other marginalised groups in society in smaller population centres and rural areas have seen more benefit in just taking the money being offered to them (by the mafia) as opposed to actually voting in accordance to their beliefs and waiting for the promised changes that never come. Here, corruption makes a big difference as, as you all suspect, buying and selling of votes is illegal, but corruption makes it very easy for these crimes to just be swept under the rug.
TLDR: The main problems that makes it difficult for Bulgaria to fix its political crisis are the omnipresent corruption and voter disillusionment and apathy, which are both creating a negative feedback loop, perpetuating the crisis and the country's problems.
За съжаление малко ги интересува за Пеевски, ДПС и задкулисието извън България..
This comment needs to get pinned.
Викам да дадем цялата власт на Кокорчо
Just for reference, if everything was going normally, 8 elections would be held in 32 years, not 4. And these 8 are only the Parliamentary elections. In the past 4 years there have also been elections for President, Local elections for mayors and European Parliament elections.
Sounds nice. Presidentialism could help if you are really tiree of so many elections, but it could be much worse. Hungary has a shitty electoral system and you see the what results in. Too many elections is maybe the best problem to have
@@StanAbelHU our current president is a child of communism and doesnt hide his biases toward current russian "democracy". so we first have to get rid of him.
How to robe most easy the people and the country, make expensive elections and make back doors to drain it.
Good thing is though, theres only been 1 presidential election and that's cause Rumen Radev is actually good.
@@martinbryaskov7709 Rumen Radev is the closes thing we've had to a national traitor since Georgi Dimitrov.
As a person born in Bulgaria and living in Bulgaria, I always vote. The situation is indeed confusing.
Thank you for sharing this content!
You are doing your civic duty . With a voter turn out of 33% no party can claim a victory no matter the results.
i have never seen a bulgarian actually living in Bulgaria 🤣🤣
@@gizemlikisi6213 as a bulgarian living abroad I agree
@@pungkaww ur country is the worst place i ever visited so u are right to live abroad. ur country doesn't even have pavements. straight to 2024 from Stone Age 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 I wonder how they let this country into the eu
@@pungkaww im glad on behalf you. bulgaria looks like came to 2024 straight from the stone age 🤣
Hope you guys manage to get this situation fixed. Best wishes from Macedonia!
Благодарам, брате.
Its year 2037 Bulgaria had elections for 337 times in a row. The president is choosing a new temp government to tackle the current problems.
😂
Delyan Peevski has an approval rating of 2% (not net approval, only 2% of all Bulgarians like him), yet he got 11.5% of the vote. I try to vote as much as possible but how can you possibly believe these results? A solid 1/5 of the vote is probably either purchased or controlled. As much as I believe it's a citizen's duty to vote I can definitely sympathise with people who don't believe the process will yield any positive results.
Dude, the labor party won one of the largest majorities in the history and 3 months later UKians hated Starmer. Ppl don't know what they want.
There is no 2 %..approval. It is far less..
@@gohanssj48 I understand what you say but here in Bulgaria im going to try to explain the situation as clear as possible, Delyan Peevski is KNOWN for buying votes, people are getting caught but they are just a fraction of all the people that also arent, medias go to areas mostly of gypsies and turkish-bulgarians(the people who sell their votes the most) and ask them why do they vote and im dead serious they are honest and say that they are getting paid. Its not about what people want, its knows in Bulgaria that votes are being bought, yet the law enforcment is corrupt by the same people that buy votes.
The vote was 100% bought.
It's pretty simple - dividing DPS means dividing all its structures, so Dogan gets structure leader X, Peevski Y. And both local structures leaders work to get votes for their party. And Peevski's party also took the initials of the old party, so it's pretty simple and logical, but it takes critical thinking - the opposite of what the political PRs are writing on social media.
6:54 Bulgarian here. That information is partly incorrect. YES, the second attempt goes to the second largest party in the parliament, BUT THE THIRD/LAST ATTEMPT is given to the president and he chooses one of the other parties that entered the parliament to form a government. If that party fails - yet again new elections
Can't believe my country is getting a sequel video from this channel regarding our elections...
bukv
Of course we are -it is becoming a very famous worldwide soup opera
Y'all should have mentioned how 1 of the parties got 3.999% of the vote and was like 12 votes short of 4% lol
Yep, this was blatant vote rigging, to kick the party out of parliament.
29, not 12 but yah
@@5romir 21
Exactly!
@@XFRUevery day numbers change, first 29 then 26 now 21, looks like even they don't know lol
loved the coalition builder 6:15
Hey, Native Bulgarian who's in his late 20s here, I voted a couple of times but young people are sick and tired of all this political mess. The older generations and institutions have failed many young people, especially in various fields (ex: health, mental health awareness), while younger people will find solace in each other and have some crutch, it's only temporary as many young people just flee abroad for better opportunities. Those who stay here either feel nihilistic or hopeless, that no matter who we choose the same scenario will run again as it has been for 30+ years this far.
The older generations don't make it any easy especially since they continue to complain and fault us for their misdeeds in the past. While yes, I agree that young people here could change the political landscape but we'll only be met with suppression and media slander. Or worse aggravating assaults.
TLDR: This whole mess is OUR COUNTRY'S fault, not Russia's, Not Nato's.
Agreed. Look at the poles, they got their shot straight in no time of for countries with less people, the Croats for example. And as for the voting. I turned 18 3 years ago, i just didn't vote this time and joked with my parents that I'll vote in the next one a few months later, cuz i don't see a parliament forming any time soon
@KaloyanKasabov
То си е така. До някъде няма смисъл с гласуването, щото пак ще има същата какафония която я има за последните 5-6години.
The situation is even worse over here in Macedonia. Not only is corruption skyrocketing, but they make it look like its Greece or Bulgaria's fault for our inability to enter the EU. The country doesnt even want to get better, it just wants to enter the EU, and on what account? Nobody knows...
The balkans are hopeless, its sad that we have to move abroad, but even being a stranger in a foreign country offers more opportunities than rotting in your own corrupt home.
@donkeyhot5475
I heard about the stuff there, honestly nobody's stopping N.Macedonia from joining the EU, it's just the governments and old generational hatred that tears the Balkans apart with corruption and greedy liars we call politics.
As a Zoomer Bulgarian, I don't see a point hating anybody in the Balkans - sure we can have history jabs but why seethe and hate when all of us are stuck in a loop that only a few can get out?
@@ianvidelov156dude, before you vetoed our ass for the last 6,7 years. The french pussy Macron did it two times, before handing the task to you. Greece did it for 30 years .. Saying that we dont get blocked is slander, and our dumb politicians use the eu excuse since i know and get nothing done. Now 300 bulgarians voted for the election and we are supposed to place them in the constitution, which will be only start for bickering. I dont hate bulgarians, but your politicians really make it hard not to do so. We are really making life way harder, fck up future for what ? Debating history 😢 its sad. Instead of friendship promoting hate and division. And there is no end in sight. Pozdrav.
As a Bulgarian, I had to watch this recap, simply because I have forgotten what happened in 2021/2022 😆 I used to vote at every election however nothing changes and still, Borisov and Peevski are not in jail where they belong.
I think Rumen Radev, Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev deserve it more! 0 work done, a lot of money gone, idk how you don't see it?
@@hlapeto0oВсичките са един дол дренки. Има само едно подходящо място за тях всички заедно. Това място е зад решетките.
@@hlapeto0o What does it mean to deserve "more" to go to jail? You either need to be there or you don't. You either commit a crime or you don't. GERB and DPS ruled for years and years on end. PP-DB didn't even have one full year in government.
@lexkenn If you don't understand such a simple thing, I don't think there is a point to continue this conversation!
a, yotover, gledah ti fortnite videata predi 5 godini :DD
Your video missed a lot of detail…
1. The wider coalition between PP, DB, BSP and ITN fell apart because BSP didn’t want to send weapons to Ukraine and ITN didn’t want to continue the legislation that was about to limit the corruption in some gov. bodies such as the national bank etc.
2. The second “coalition” (it’s never been called a coalition in Bulgarian) between PPDB and GERB was because of Ukraine and was based on their pro EU orientation. The deal was for GERB to sign anti corruption laws (which the EU supported) including the changes in the constitution. But GERB obviously didn’t want that so when it was their term to have Maria Gabriel as a PM she suggested some random corrupt names to become her ministers without agreeing this with Nikolai Denkov (as previously agreed). So they used this so withdraw from the “coalition” and therefore not sign any anti corruption laws.
3rd. The high court didn’t accept the new changes of the constitution saying that they are illegal. Which is nonsense as the EU supported them. Indicating that the court is corrupt.
4th Peevski works side by side with Boyko Borisov and he broke the DPS party (which relies on the ethnic Turkish people for support) into two. Recen studies/research show that less than 2% of the population likes Peevski. There are also loads of video footage from the last elections where it’s very clear that people who should be counting the votes are actually adding votes for Peevski. It’s estimated that he spent over 150 million levs to buy himself votes.
There is so much more
I can confirm this is true.
Sure, buddy, PPDB wasn't in a coalition with GERB and Peevski... Keep making excuses for them.
"The high court didn’t accept the new changes of the constitution saying that they are illegal."
All of the changes in the constitution were garbage, the only reason some of them were not branded illegal is that PPDB voted Desislava Atanasova in the court.
Someone has to pin this comment to the top!
As a fellow Bulgarian, I too agree this comment is true and should be pinned!
+ 1
goat comment
For reference: The Weimar Republic, known for its highly unstable politics and many elections, held arguably between 7 to 9 elections (depending on if you count the inital 1919 national assembly election and the already no longer free election of March 1933) throughout its entire roughly 15 year long history. Bulgaria has somehow reached this number of elections in less than a third of that time. 😮
how did they keep hindenburg as president then?
@@lightningstrike5024 Parliamentary elections, not presidential ones. There were only 3 presidential elections throughout that time (the president back then was directly elected), with Hindenburg winning two of these.
There was an election in March 33? I thought mustache man took over in January
Well I havent been rejected from art school but I got a mustache so I qualify for the role of you know who.
If you wonder why at 5:40 he says "record 9 parties", when the graph shows 8, it's because a small, super populist part was about to pass the 4% barrier, but at the end the election committee calculated their score - 3.999% - and I'm not kidding. :D
and for all these record number of elections in the past couple of years, we've spent ... 500,000,000 EUR :(
So the EU says it wants to stop corruption in Bulgaria but ends up creating more. I'm not surprised, its what they always do.
In Bulgaria according to a poll ~50% do not want a government. Many actually think the country is running better without one.
Yes, that's the whole problem. Many people think based on perceptions, not on facts.
That means ~50% are complete idiots, because the country has a government. What we're voting for is Parliament. We don't have a Parliament at the moment, not a government. Bulgaria has a government at all times - if not one voted by a Parliament, then a caretaker one appointed by a chosen caretaker PM.
Maybe some more federalism could help? Belgium has similar problems with forming a federal government, albeit for different reasons and pretty much for most of their existence (They still haven't got a government since the June election, Bulgaria even organized another election since then). And I've heard people say similar things about Belgium.
But as opposed to Bulgaria, the regions, namely Brussels, Flanders & Waloonia (+ the German-speaking community) have their own parliaments & governments with considerable powers which run smoothly most of the time.
I suppose corruption would still persist, but any government at all (likely PP-led in cities and GERB-led in more rural provinces, if I had to guess) is better than nothing.
@@TzvetozarCherkezov yeah the council of ministers, the defacto ruling part of the country for the last 4 years, and they are the once that accept all parliamentary nominations and configuration before being inacted, and actually yeah i too thing we are better without parliament, but only if the government is doing their job and are not corrupt
as long as the economy is doing fine (which it is at the moment), people don't care about elections, the government, corruption, etc. but once the money runs out, people will rise. the last really big protests in 1997 were triggered by hyperinflation and things did change back then, we're a much better country thanks to this. so I hope that one day (probably soon) when all this corruption really starts affecting regular people (as in we get dirt poor again) the axe will come for Peevski and Borisov. this is how it is here, we have to be pushed to the brink of collapse to really start working as a society. otherwise we care mostly that we have food on the table, those high road values like rule of law, justice, freedom are too abstract for most people, unless their lack results in a total collapse.
30 yeard old bulgarian here. I forgot how many times I voted. I even visited the parlament on a school feild trip. The goverment treats peoole horribly if you want to be smart, ambitious, educated. It treats you great if you are just want to be unitressted, loyal worker. The Inteligencia/artist is always the one to suffer
While this is a big reason for talented and smart people to leave the country, it is also an issue that's noticeable on international competitions or exhibitions - the Bulgarian representatives are almost always participating on their own, without any financial help from the state, and sometimes even "despite" the state. The media doesn't even reflect on our successes. How are we supposed to be proud of ourselves when we don't even know just how many good things we are putting out into the world? How are we supposed to make an image for ourselves when all higher-ups deny the possibility of official international representation because it's a "useless waste of money"? This applies to the technical, sports, education and many other fields.
Corruption PERCEPTION is not the same as corruption LEVEL. As a Dutchman I also used to think corruption is low in the Netherlands..
As a Bulgarian I think Peevski should be removed at any cost, as he seems not to care about anything except his own political power. Plus, we shouldn't ignore the fact how little of the population actually votes - a meagre 30%.
As a Bulgarian, I must say that this is not a political crisis - we are finally evolving into democracy, and those events are pretty much needed.
Agree, we never had such a struggle for power befoe
Малко хора осъзнават, че в бананова република гласуването е безсмислено. Много българи се държат така сякаш гласуват за президент на САЩ като се заговори за избори... Изборите в държави като България са Clown fiesta. Вместо да гласувате научете да правите нещо освен да говорите счупен английски от много холивудски филми...
@@pavlinpetkov8984bot
bullshit , there are very few countries with ths much elections , that means that none of the parties are interested in developing Bulgaria , everyone wants the government for their own benefits
@@pavlinpetkov8984 Остави го евроатлантика да си гласува и да се бие в гърдите
As a bulgarian, I love your pronunciation. It is very funny
lmao fr, especially "borisov", he made him sound russian 🤣
Borisov and Peevski still have a tight grip on the small towns and counties. Most of the mayors are from GERB or DPS; they easily force the locals into voting for the party: "winter is coming, and if you want access for firewood, you'll vote for us". Peevski holds the "purchased vote", i.e. giving money for votes, mostly within the ever-growing Roma ghettos.
Overall, to have a real impact, these two factors need to be eliminated, and it won't happen. Yeah, the cities can vote for others, but Bulgaria is not just Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Burgas.
Cool video, as usual, but there are a few inaccuracies I think are important to be pointed out:
1) At 1:21 where you show the corruption index chart, BG is featured twice. The real BG is second to last, that's out of question, but there is one more at 9th place. I believe that's Belgium, which is BE.
2) At 5:39 your graph abbreviates the last party's name as MECh, which looks kind of odd. In Bulgarian, their abbreviation means SWORD, so it's kind of like SHIELD from the Marvel Universe, they're going for that effect probably. But in Bulgarian we represent the "ch" sound with only one letter, so I get the abbreviation in English, it just looks weird. I see you've decided to take the Bulgarian abbreviations and transliterate them in order to have a unified standard, which I support. They also sound cooler this way, rather than translating the abbreviations. Maybe except for PP. But in some cases exceptions are preferred and I think SWORD is one of them. This also better explains their logo and their political orientation.
3) At 5:45 you say 9 parties enter the parliament, which is not true, as you can also see on your graph earlier - it's 8. It was thought to be true on the day of the election, but the 9th party - "Greatness" remained with 3,999% of the votes. The protocols were recalculated because of this and it turned out that just 21 votes were not enough for them to enter. This is kind of the main topic of this election, since the party was the surprise of the pervious election, and its current leader is connected to a lot of pyramid scheme complaints related to his many businesses.
4) You mentioned the split in DPS, but not the reason. And that was the main pre-election topic. Also there are protests now that call for the abolishment of the election results, but they all come from different groups and for different reasons. The PP supporters accuse DPS-NN for election fraud and vote buying. The "Greatness" supporters are unhappy for obvious reasons and also see election fraud behind it.
Given that this crisis is nowhere near to being solved, even if a government is formed somehow after this election, you might need to consider having a Bulgarian on your team. And it's not like I haven't sent you an application, but maybe you haven't seen it. Granted, not from this profile, but I'm sure you can find it, if you look for it. 😉
If you think 9 parties is a lot, then don't even look at belgian politics.
Or Brazilian parliament.
@@BGRN-pp5tk yes
Great video. You previous coverage on Bulgaria were quite shallow and seemed to be made in haste. This one is different though. Thank you for providing the most detail in 8 minutes or so. Looking forward to more videos on Bulgaria.
All you need to know is that Peefski is а successor of Multigroup, along with Dogan, and Borisov is former bodyguard of Zhivkov, former leader of People Republic of Bulgaria. Everything else are nuances
I think we can all agree that Bulgaria has some wild party names.
GERB - Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (in bulgarian)
PP ;) - We continue the change (Produlzawame Promqnata)
DB - Democratic Bulgaria
Revival - Popular term (Wuzrazdhane) that historically addresses how bulgarians became once again proud of their ethnicity and were motivated to fight Ottoman rule
MECh - Litreally means Sword and is an acronym for unity moral and honor or something like that
Greatness - (Velichie)
DPS - Turkish minority party that was basically coupled into a GERB-alligned corrupt party due to the new leader
APS - THE ACTUAL turkish party that split form the DPS cause its leader is corrupt and doesn't even represent turks (he himself is a Bulgarian)
BSP - Bulgarian Socialist Party
Also fun fact, every party has PP next to their name, cuz it means ''Political Party''
DPS - Movement for rights and freedoms (as he said it's a Turkish party)
Oh, you haven't even seen one bit of it. There are ones like "Russofiles for Bulgaria", whom I respect for being so honestly anti-Bulgaria straight from the name. As a person who recently started voting it fells like every option is more ridiculous than the last. ( I say that, because from my research they want to sell-out the entire country to Russia, which may not be entirely true as nowadays I can't trust any news source. In conclusion, do not take my opinion as fact, as it is subject to change if I am given better information from a credible source.)
We also have "The Beer Party" 😂
"Rise up, thugs out!"
I think it's apparent that 60-70% of Bulgarians are fine with this arrangement of celebrating a national election every trimester, I deduce that mostly from the fact that NOBODY showed up to the polls. I suggest an improvement to be made: hand over the elections to a random number generator algorithm, that way we can save ourselves the trouble of going physically to the polls in the first place, whatever result it spits out will be with the same accuracy as the average Bulgarian voter.
Dude, if you don't live in Bulgarian and you really don't know what is going on in the country, your suggestions are useless. We need smth like operation "Clean Hands" - cleaning all of the corrupted politics and ppl in all government institutions. Other wise we'll get the same bs next few years no matter how many ppl are voting.
@@opushead Didn't you see the people on the news? Some of them didn't even know what they were voting for, some said they were voting for a number
@@feetfungus19some said they were voting for a president 😂
@feetfungus19 That's the bought vote. Some of those... things...don't speak bulgarian.
As a regular Bulgarian viewer of this channel, I am simultaneously glad and ashamed. While I think more outside attention is needed for what is becoming a very protracted political crisis, at the same time bringing to light the level of political and leadership incompetence and corruption for the world to see is really sad. FYI, one major potential development that is expected in the next one or two years is that after President Radev's second and last legal mandate expires, he will most likely form a party and try to shake up the status-quo. The problem is, that's prolonging the period of instability even further.
God bless Bulgaria!🙏
This is starting to remind me of the political deadlock in Israel from 2019 to 2022 with all these elections.
It’s worse. Far far worse, take it from a politically active citizen.
I think somebody needs to make a series based on the politilac situation in Bulgaria. Things are so dynamic and absurd that they will have material for at least 10 seasons
It's like a soap opera, it's amusing at first but as the episodes go by you begin to feel odd, when enough time passes you realise that what you are feeling is deep disgust.
quick detail to point out: GERB is pronounced with an E as in bed rather than an uh sound. It means coat of arms in Bulgarian
Nothing as it seems in Bulgaria: parties, leaders, policies and in a way they do not matter. What matters is the war in Ukraine which determines everything else.
90 % of the Bulgarian elite comes from the old communist nomenclature and the all powerful secret police apparatus which was effectively a local branch of the Soviet KGB. Literary everything in Bulgaria was decided by Moscow and the decisive factor for success was the direct link to Kremlin. After 1989 Bulgaria the local elite applied the Russian oligarchic model to the full with a bit more colourful party life. When Putin became president in the early 2000s he opened Russia to the West and Bulgaria did that too joining NATO and EU. Bulgaria became a bridge between Russia and the EU where both invested and had strong control: Russia holding 90 % of gas, oil, nuclear and coal supplies and facilities and the West having the retail and industrial sector.
Borissov and his GERB party are full of former army and police people and despite the rhetoric kept the oligarchic and corruption system in tact feeding it up with EU money. Borissov was a former mafia guy and was the bodyguard of the long serving communist leader of Bulgaria Todor Zhivkov fully loyal to the generals of the Bulgarian DS/KGB. In 20 years they became enormously rich and control the media, the judicial system and the prosecutor office plus the security agency DANS.
Most of the other parties have the same origin and structure. Different names, same corporation and shareholders. Corruption thrives but it is protected vigorously by the judiciary and security services plus parties like DPS, ITN, BSP and quasi patriots of Vazrazhdane.
Hence, the only option left is street protests. They erupted several times but each time the KGB elite created new parties which when voted in power did exactly nothing.
The genuine opposition parties are small, have no funding and no media, and are powerless against the combined onslaught of all other parties plus all media plus direct intervention by the security agency and the judiciary which do everything to destroy it. So Borissov and DPS win but lack legitimacy because they block all measures against corruption. Europe insists so Borissov promises and then plays a game of trying but not succeeding to reform anything.
And then in 2022 came the war in Ukraine. The Bulgarian KGB elite was torn in two: it depends on Russia for its money, protection and business but lives the EU money and does not want them to stop. The double game they were playing for 20 years became impossible. Putin insists on direct support in the style of Orban, Brussels had sponsored and supported Borissov for very long time ignoring his antics but now demanded loyalty.
Under pressure from the US, GERB-DPS-BSP did support a minority government by the reformist opposition. They proclaimed support for Ukraine publicly but privately waged a war against the pro-Ukraine government and slowed down its actions as much as they could. Then found a reason the toppled them altogether.
This was their solution to the Moscow-Brussels dilemma. We cannot chose and will not chose. Putin kills the trailers, Brussels talks a lot but is not nearly as dangerous. So - how to stop support for Ukraine? By having no government and no responsibilities. By calling election after election in promising everything to Brussels when the are done and then… calling another one.
It is a waiting game. The moment one of the two sides wins they will form a government. If Trump wins: old Russian style kleptocracy will return with vengeance led by Borissov, DPS, ITN, BSP and whoever else they chose.
If Kamala Harris wins, Borissov will make his n-teeth pseudoreformist government and pay lip service to supporting Ukraine. Either way, Russian interests, money, ties will remain in tact waiting for better times to come on the surface
Звучит интересно , но ведь Болгария поставляла оружие Украине , разве нет ?
Bulgaria has not had a pro-Russian government since a gypsy Kostov,, became prime minister and purged the administration.The transition in Bulgaria failed and now Solomon Passy ordered all the media in Bulgaria to write that the "communists" are to blame for the failure, which is not true.
Thanks for the amazing comment.
What is the bigger game of PP then though? Is it an attempt of US to break the ties to RU?
This is not true and is complete nonsense. The Bulgarian media and the Bulgarian services were controlled by the Clinton clan. Kiril Petkov's government fell because there was a recording in which he said that the head of DANS was coordinated with the American embassy.
Insane. This gets even worse when you think about voter turnout. I think it's currently at roughly 30%
It's at 39%.
Watch the whole video before commenting man
Gerb=mafia
and I thought we had it bad here at israel 💀
You have it worse than us overall lmao
🇵🇸
can't get over the bibi's babysitter ad xD
Bibi's the goat. No diddy. 🇵🇸
Some but not all problems can be summarized as follows:
1. Borisov refused to leave politics after the protests and when his party was defeated numerous times, likely out of fear of being investigated under the new regime.
2. Anti western, pro Russian sentiment and foreign interference (mostly Russian). The problem here is that most people are pro EU and NATO yet still have some reservations about both alliances. This makes it impossible to gather around pro Russian parties because you cannot square the circle of being anti West while participating in every Western institution but also walking on eggshells of people that have a growing sense of Western identity.
3. Voter fatigue. People don't take elections seriously because they know they'll be new elections again in 4 months.
4. General disillusionment. We were supposed to be in Schengen and the Euro zone 15 years ago yet here we are. Many infrastructure projects as well as rule of law bills were promised and nothing. People vote on vibes because they don't actually believe that anything else really makes any difference.
I don't think there's anything that can solve this mess, however increasing the threshold of getting into parliament can help by making it possible to create coalitions with less parties and this potentially more stable. Getting rid of the most outrageous politicians can also help.
Yes blame everything on Russia, never urself
2. Why don't we conduct referendums about NATO, EU, Eurozone and Schengen and test your claim :) What other way do you suggest to resolve that obvious dispute between the poeple?
3. People are tired to set aside 30 mins - 1h to vote 2 times a year. In other word people are tired to set aside 2 hours in the span of 365 days. Foegive ne, but this is absule nonsense :)
A referendum on every debatable topic is the only way to unite and solve this crisis.
It's a bit strange That the "democrats" are against such referendum, instead they want to impose their stance on the other 93% of the society :)
@@Paddington-officialwhy do I even try to answer to a bot, but here I go, wasting time again:
1. Referendums are a historically unreliable metric to measure a public s opinion, see Brexit for an example, where many people didn't participate because they thought it was a done deal and fools like Boris Johnson went galvanizing the public and spreading lies and misinformation about eu regulation, British funding, etc. This happened in a developped democracy, imagine what would happen in ours.
2. Voting is not simply taking 30 minutes and going with your day, although many authoritarians believe it is such. It is about placing your trust in someone and holding them accountable when they don't act like they have promised in short it is about responsibility and accountability and when the person you've trusted so many times fails you again and again, how can you in good conscious vote for them without feeling like a fool and nobody wants to be a fool.
@@Paddington-official Holding referendum about EU? If people vote to leave EU, are they ready to return all the billions of euros that Europe has been giving Bulgaria for infrastructure for all those decades?
@@Cappuccino17 1. The referendum is about re-defining our membership terms because right now Bulgarian agriculture, business, education etc. are suffering badly. So, not leaving but re-defining membership terms :)
2. As you probably don't know every EU member has a membership fee. In Bulgaria's case this is 2.5 billion euros.
For the last couple of years Bulgaria received less money than it gave to EU.
------------
Get your fact rights, dude :)
I'm Bulgarian and I have no idea what the hell is happening.
evala
8 elections in 4 years
That's a lot
same, all i know at this point is that bulgaria is suffering, parliament is corrupt, the people have no money to live anymore, everyone is stressed and tired...
Благодарим ви!
The problem is our legislation. We don't have a threshold for the elections to be considered valid. Even if a single person casts their vote, the elections would be considered valid.
But yes, there is no excuse for not voting, I also think if you don't vote, you have no right to complain. I haven't missed an election ever since I have the right to vote.
In short: After the USSR fall Bulgaria was governed by spinoffs of the communist party disguised in different forms. They clinged to the judicial system at all levels and benefited from corruption especially after EU funds poured in. What is happening now is that the population does not want them anymore. The fact that all other factions attack PP all day long indicates that they are probably clean. However, the voters does not want to vote them in with majority. However, they are gatekeepers now, because apparently the other formations cannot form government because of who know what dependencies.
The dudes in this clip are by trade: Professor Doctor of Chemical Sciences, Harvard Business School alumni, firefighter and ex-fighter pilot. Guess which two of them are Prime minister and President of Bulgaria and you will figure out yourselves what's wrong with this country?
Yeah, Harvard business school alumni, who is known for his business with nutritional supplements and photoshoping those supplements on an Opra magazine, claiming it was legit 😂 Also let's not forget how he lied to 7 million people, claiming he forfeited his Canadian citizenship to comply with Bulgarian laws... Also, coming to power on anti-establishment platform only to rule later with the same mafia boys.
Евала! I live in BG, but I watch ur vids for the news
Something else that explains the low turnout is that the country is not so divided on social policy, so the main differences between the parties are economic and personal. Bulgaria is divided but it’s nothing like the west in general so there isn’t a sense that if the other side wins there would be hell on earth, just bad. It’s a very poor, but safe and tolerant place with no hate between the Turkish and Bulgarian ethnicities.
I love the new visual format ❤❤
if 38% of the people vote for said parties, then 62% of the people don't want any of them.
Bulgarians should have a referendum and simply abolish all political parties. Only vote for people not shortsighted parties
If 38% of the people vote for said parties then 62% of the people don't care or want to give their say to those 38%. It's that simple actually.
@captainvanisher988 it's not that simple. Parliaments are always undemocratic, since they destroy the core principle of democracy that everybody can chose and be chosen. Politics should be banned in every democracy
nice graphics! :)
Both of the governments in the past 4 years were led by PP (We Continue the Change). Both were voted out as soon as the anti-corruption laws were about to be looked at in the parliament. No surprises there.
can you explain that just a few days ago we had an incident where MPs couldn't decide who should sit where
5:43 We'll have 8 parties in parliament, just like the graph shows. We could have had a 9th party, but Величие (Greatness) got 3,999% of the votes and was 25 votes short of passing the 4% threshold.
Having 9 parties would have been a record, but we had 8 parties in parliament in 2014.
Would be 15, if there wasn’t a Threshold.
Velichie = 9
Blue Bulgaria = 2
Bulgarian Rise = 1
Russophiles for Bulgaria = 1
Direct Democracy = 1
People's Voice = 1
Free Voter’s = 1
* None of the Above(Not a Party) = 8
*All of the Remaining Party’s Combined = 2
GERB-SDS (-8)
We Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (-4)
Revival (-4)
DPS-A New Beginning (-3)
BSP - United Left (-2)
Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (-2)
There is Such a People (-2)
Morality, Unity, Honour (-1)
What you do with the 8 none of the above seats, I guess is leave 8/240 seats in parliament empty, while with the 2 combined seats from all of the other minor party’s, I suppose you can add those 2 seats to the 8 empty seats, to make it 10 empty seats.
Hello! I wasn't aware of your content up until this point, however, I want to congratulate you for this video! Amazing input, as well as very clear and spot-on explanations. As a Bulgarian who follows politics actively, I'd like to mention two minor corrections about some things you said:
1. The President does not pass the third mandate to the third party per se, he can rather choose any other party as the third mandate-holder. There has been a practice from Radev to traditionally prefer ITN as that third party.
2. There are 8 parties in the parliament after the last October elections; however, there is a possibility that Greatness (Velichie; Величие) might somehow get in since they are undergoing some complaint-filing processes to the electoral committees.
Nonetheless, a brilliant summary video and analysis. Keep up the good work!
it is very insane and becomming more insane, peevski and borisov need to leave politics to stop the crisis
Bulgarian downfall started with Boyko Borisov
A lot of people in Bulgaria and even out of it refuse to go to vote as even the elections are corrupted. It’s easy to vote for your party but then Borisov always wins. Plus the turnout for voting is lower then needed to declare the elections successful.
Great content. Really concise, accurate and to the point.
One correction, though, at 6:57: if the second-largest parliamentary group (PP) fails to form a government, the president has the option to choose to which of the other parliamentary groups to give the mandate. This is not necessarily the third-largest (Revival).
At the end you mentioned that the voting activity has increased.
It's safe to assume that it's because of a record in bought votes from Peevski.
For a few dozen million euro he basically bought into 4th place.
Hey, I have one minor note to mention here. The president in bulgaria is obligated to ask the first party to form a government, then if the first party is unable to do so the president asks the second party to form a government. And here comes the interesting part. After this the president can choose on which of the remaining parties to give the opportunity to form a government. This process doesn't take all parties. Only those three time. And after this we are going to elections again. I hope I explained it well emough. But apart from this the video is on a really high level. Great job :)
Some of the parties have been talking about a cordon sanitaire against GERB and DPS by forming a 7 party government, which would have a majority. However, such a government would obviously be extremely unstable, and I highly doubt that such an agreement would even come to fruition.
I just wish that a technocratic government is formed for at least 3 years so politics can come back to normal, but alas it probably won't happen.
There is no way to implement it, because the "Vazrazhdane" party (which is the 3rd political force) will not support a government if a referendum on not joining the Eurozone is not held, a "law on foreign agents" is not introduced, a referendum on leaving NATO and renegotiation of the terms of Bulgaria's membership in the EU.
All things that the neoliberals from "PPDB" would not accept. And even if "Vazrazhdane" forms a coalition with "PPDB", this will be political harakiri for them. Due to the fact that their voters do not like "PPDB" and accuse them of treason.
And the "ITN" and "PPDB" parties would hardly form a coalition with the "MECH" party, because the chairman of "MECH" is a former member of "ITN" and "PPDB" and betrays his former allies, for example, he presented a record of a meeting of " PPDB" in which one of the presidents of the party says: "We will hold the elections with our Ministry of the Interior" and "We have coordinated the changes in the security services with the embassy (it is assumed that it is the American embassy)"
As a Bulgarian myself if this continues in the next 3 years a lot of our people will leave the country. This country is a mess
8 parties were elected, not 9. Error in the video
A few small corrections:
PP actually formed a coalition with DB in 2023 so now they are PP-DB
The president can pass the 3rd mandate to any party, not that it matters much in this context but in some situations it can be very important.
Other than that this was a pretty nice video, I love the Coalition Builder skit :D
As a bulgarian I can confirm nothing good is happening in Bulgaria
Emigrate then
I left France for Bulgaria and I prefer to live here than in France
@@kmt9337 Bulgaria is a good place to be these days. People are always complaining about things, but there are a lot of problems in Germany, France, the UK, and the US such as emigration policy, poverty, homelessness, etc. You did a great job by moving to Bulgaria, pal 🙂
@@corruptteacher exactly ! Sometimes its sad to see Bulgarian people complaining about their country. Its not perfect of course but its a chance to live in a safe country, with low taxes...
@@kmt9337 I'm super happy that there are people in Bulgaria who actually understand the advantages of living here :D btw taxes aren't low, but considering the taxes you’d have to pay, let's say, in Germany ..... xD
As a Irish citizen I feel so sorry for My Bulgaria friends that they have to deal with this crisis it is clear that corruption is a very serious problem in Bulgaria
even romania has more stability than bulgaria
imagine
and that's a bad thing. in Romania, you have a monstrous coalition between extremely corrupt left and right parties, that seized the power and splits the spoils of "war". they're running a HUGE deficit, borrowing massive amounts of money at extreme rates, raising taxes and impoverishing the population. all that so that they can steal as much money as possible.
at least Bulgaria is economically stable, which is FAR more important than political stability.
Recently we’ve been saying stuff like “when you have been voting more times than getting laid you know it’s bad”, “if Peevski joined the American election he would win no questions asked” and yeah the political situation here is awful, also there is very little amount of people voting proportionally speaking
Actually you did not say about buying 300k votes and preventing for one of the party called - Velichie to not enter the parlament because not having 21 votes! When more then 90k voted for it. And there are video prove they have away more then 21 votes which are not recorded on a paper, but were recorded on a video.
Yeah, nobody cares about those :) Nobody ever will
@jorobachkadosta it is not about care. It's about stealing our votes and no one does anything about it. Sad
A five-person team is unable to provide a thorough analysis of the political situation in Bulgaria, which is commendable. 👏
By the way, the answer to the Bulgarian political crisis can be found at 1:59 in the video.
Have you noticed the difference in how the European Union and the United Kingdom are depicted in videos? While making critical content is okay, treating them one-sided is not cool. The main takeaway from the TLDR is that the EU is seen as having “crises,” while the UK is portrayed as having “explanations.” I wanted to clarify that I’m not trying to be disrespectful or anything like that. I genuinely enjoy your content and have subscribed to all of your channels. However, I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed with the content you’re putting out there.
@@xander6522Seconded.
Cope.
Well he’s a Brit after all, some bias towards his own country is expected
@@ad_astra468 That's why I would recommend doing some additional research to ensure you’re getting accurate information.
As every political topic, this one is also very complex, but I believe you managed to explain the situation well. Thank you for the video about my country!
Bulgaria has had a government for many years, it’s in a huge complex built in a public park. It’s known as the American Embassy.
1:15 "BG" is shown twice on this bar chart. Once between "EE" and "AT" and once between "RO" and "HU".
Probably it was supposed to be BE - Belgium.
Lots of speculation in this video
Your chart at 1:17 shows 'BG' twice.
In the last 10-15 years when we had stable governments things were definitely not normal in the country. In fact since the political turmoil started life has gotten better for a large part of the population. Not to say that there still aren't huge problems with judicial and securty systems but the standart of living on average somehow increased.
6:25 Love the nerdy nod to the windows defrag tool, starting of with 69 (nice!) seats. This is soo meme-able.
In my opinion, the only real solution is to change the electoral system. They could adopt a single-member district system like in the UK, or a two-round single-member district system like in France.
That's not a easy thing to achieve, to change the political system to such a degree you need a constitutional change, that means 2/3 of the parlament must be on board (the Bulgarian can't get 50% of the parties to form a coalition), and that's a very inflamatory issue. Even minor changes are very hard to pass, bcs everyone judges them how they will affect their party.
@pivanov3321 thanks very much for the constitutional information. In many countries the electoral system has designed by the normal laws, not with the constitution. If the electoral system is written and explained in constitution, I don't think that they can change it. As you said, parties wouldn't be reach supermajority in this composition.
It's actually 8 parties. The 9th one didn't get over the 4% of the popular vote threshold. They were 21 votes short.
Also the 3rd mandate to form a government is not given to the 3rd placing party. The president decides who to give the mandate to and it can be any single party in the National Assembly.
CORRECTION: Bulgaria has been in political crises since 30 years.
Bulgaria mentioned!!!
It is necessary to convene the Great National Assembly (Велико Народно Събрание), which would send the entire mafia to jail, then everything will fall into place.
It is part of the mafia itself.
I do think that you should have paid more attention to the two smallest parties: MECh and Velichie, since their results and the way they emerged are really interesting.
The longer Bulgaria has no government the better. All economic statistics are up. Sofia is a richer capital than most other capital cities of central and eastern Europe. Politicians are busy bickering with each other so they aren't focused on stealing money and corruption.
He manage to mispronounce every name in that one sentence - from GERB, to Borisov, to Sofia
Limiting the power of the President in such a chaotic political situation is a strategic mistake. The President is perhaps the only one with both a mandate and the ability to function as a referee, and impose a caretaker government, on a political system which is unable to compromise.
They should have a semi-presidential system like France. Not that it will be the greatest thing, but people would know who’s their leader.
Yeah, I am generally against presidents holding significant powers, but presidential system exists to prevent fallout of repeatedly collapsing governments, something that happened all the time historically (Most significantly in interwar France and Poland) and it seems like it's still an issue in Bulgaria for whatever reason
It was a good move to limit the power of the President, but you need some context to understand why. The current Bulgarian president is pro Russia. He overused his powers quite a lot and tried to singelhandedly place Bulgaria as an ally to Russia not the EU and NATO at a crucial point in the Ukraine conflict. That was way beyond his mandate and therefore not legitimate. Bulgarian presidents are not supposed to make those kinds of decisions. As a whole the current president is preying on the political instability to be a de facto prime minister. Also the idea of a semi-presidential system is especially unsuitable for Bulgaria, because it will create even more central power which in Bulgaria is always heavily controlled by the mafia.
No, it’s not. Because first the president Rumen Radev is a Russian spy, second he had too much control over the entire country , because he literally created most of the governments in the last four years, because the parties in parliament failed to make a stable one.
It was a good move to limit the power of the President, but you need some context to understand why. The current Bulgarian president is pro Russia. He overused his powers quite a lot and tried to singelhandedly place Bulgaria as an ally to Russia not the EU and NATO at a crucial point in the Ukraine conflict. That was way beyond his mandate and therefore not legitimate. Bulgarian presidents are not supposed to make those kinds of decisions.
No you cannot explain it.
👍
Thanks
Bulgaria is the closest a European country is to anarchy
The rest of the Balkans: What about us? 🤣
@ivancho5854 "Bulgaria is the *closest* "
i wish this was actually true
The whole idea for president to choose provisional government was to assure fair elections. But this so called euro parties changed the law in such a way that president must choose between short list of names - every one of which was not only political figure but from leading party which are placed in position by party mandates! This leaded to current provisional premier who was deputy chairman of leading party and was chairman of parliament. It is not a surprise that last election despite lots of videos and evidence for cheating was won once again by former premier party and their allies. And by bulgarian law they can't change results even if there are clear evidence of fake elections.
Parliamentarty system sucks and it’s entirely anti democratic
A bit confusing in the corruption index is that there are two BG's, I'm assuming the 9th from the top is actually Belgium? Wouldn't you normally use BE for Belgium?