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.
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.
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.
@@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
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
Peevski has people in the prosecutor’s office, in the police and security service and holds many judges in 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 simple 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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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 rogged against us before a ton of us were even born
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.)
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 :)
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.
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 :(
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.
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%.
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
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. 😉
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.
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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?
I don't know if you selected to cover the story in order to relate to Henson due to the "tightness" of the situation, but as a Bulgarian I have to say that you covered it very well. The battle in Bulgaria is pro-EU vs pro-Russia and the mafia/oligarchs wants the latter, because they don't want to be jailed.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Raise the Threshold of Seats and Election Approval to 10% not 4% 10% would be harsh but it would ring out the fringe parties on the ends and bring all those votes through preferential voting to the major parties!!
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
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.
Surely the title of this video should start "6 Elections in 4 Years" or "7 Elections in 7 Years", not "8 Elections in 4 Years" because there have been elections in 2017, April, July and November 2021, 2022, 2023 and June and October 2024
There is another option and that is to have a moderator-speaker that chairs a parliament that has no formal coalitions or any coalition. Legislation is done case by case any party can put legislation in and vote on it as they see fit.
This is a very well summarised video with all the relevant information with only one small error - the President is not obliged to give the third mandate to the third political party. The president can give it to any party represented in the parliament.
At 6:50 , there is a fault in the video . President Radev after giving a mandate to GERB and PP , he isnt required to give it to 3rd party Revival , but can choose any of the other parties in parliament.
Only one correction! The president is not tight to give the mandate to third party. He can choose whatever he likes from the presented other option for the third mandate!
There is a lot of skepticism surrounding the elections from last sunday. There was this controversy that one of the parties got removed from parlament last second. The reason for that last-second decision was, that they didn't reach the 4% thershold, and need 29 more votes to enter parlament. Yeahh right. Something similar happened to the "Revival" party, which was 2nd place and then again when the results came in they were 3rd. Also nobody expected Peevski's party to pass Dogan's party. Peevsky is kinda universally hated by everyone. This shitshow has been going for the past 4 years. No wonder we hit a historic low for voter turnout.
@TLDR, there are 2 BG entries in the corruption perception index graph. Of course it's Belgium, but none the less it's still an error. Otherwise, keep up your great work, one of my favourite channels.
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.
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.
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.
Most stable Balkan democracy:
not enough time to steal and to make huge deals :D :D
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.
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.
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.
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 🤣
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
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!
loved the coalition builder 6:15
Peevski has people in the prosecutor’s office, in the police and security service and holds many judges in 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 simple 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
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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
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
Bulgaria is so democratic they have 2 elections a year 🥰
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.
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 rogged against us before a ton of us were even born
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" 😂
Gerb=mafia
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 :)
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.
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
If you think 9 parties is a lot, then don't even look at belgian politics.
Or Brazilian parliament.
@@BGRN-pp5tk yes
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 :(
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.
Can't believe my country is getting a sequel video from this channel tegarding our elections...
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%.
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
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.
As a bulgarian, I love your pronunciation. It is very funny
it is very insane and becomming more insane, peevski and borisov need to leave politics to stop the crisis
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. 😉
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.
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 :)
even romania has more stability than bulgaria
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.
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.
Hope you guys manage to get this situation fixed. Best wishes from Macedonia!
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.
Are you saying that in Bulgaria It's time for Renaissance?
I love the new visual format ❤❤
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?
Bulgaria mentioned!!!
I don't know if you selected to cover the story in order to relate to Henson due to the "tightness" of the situation, but as a Bulgarian I have to say that you covered it very well. The battle in Bulgaria is pro-EU vs pro-Russia and the mafia/oligarchs wants the latter, because they don't want to be jailed.
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.
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.
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.
And what about elections in Lithuania?
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!
Sometimes,one party system is the only solution
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.
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.
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)"
In Greece we would have had an election after a month instead of after 4.
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.
Corruption PERCEPTION is not the same as corruption LEVEL. As a Dutchman I also used to think corruption is low in the Netherlands..
Doing the same thing 8 times in 4 years and regrett it each single time sounds like holidays in Lloret de Mar.
Nice summary, as a Bulgarian I don't think there is going to be any coalition this time around either, we will vote again in 3-4 months ....
Raise the Threshold of Seats and Election Approval to 10% not 4%
10% would be harsh but it would ring out the fringe parties on the ends and bring all those votes through preferential voting to the major parties!!
That won't solve anything.
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 ?
The Windows jingle earned you a like
Your chart at 1:17 shows 'BG' twice.
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.
Bulgaria being Hungary but worse, lovely
Surely the title of this video should start "6 Elections in 4 Years" or "7 Elections in 7 Years", not "8 Elections in 4 Years" because there have been elections in 2017, April, July and November 2021, 2022, 2023 and June and October 2024
Parliamentarty system sucks and it’s entirely anti democratic
Please do a video updating us on Greece's economic growth.
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
6:25 Love the nerdy nod to the windows defrag tool, starting of with 69 (nice!) seats. This is soo meme-able.
We are running for a Guinness world record I'm sure!
Not that I prefer this, but the easiest Coalition in my opinion would be
GERB-SDS (69)
Revival(35)
ITN(18)
= 122 Seats (+2 Majority)
Not a Bulgarian, are you 😊?
You should make also a video about Romania political crisis
*corruption PERCEPTION index
Not 'how corrupt a country is' but 'how corrupt people FEEL a country is'
There's also Bulgaria ranked above Austria in your corruption perception index graph. Quite respectable. I never knew there are two Bulgarias 😁
Honestly, I lost track of the Bulgarian election results after they had so many elections...
There is another option and that is to have a moderator-speaker that chairs a parliament that has no formal coalitions or any coalition. Legislation is done case by case any party can put legislation in and vote on it as they see fit.
5:43 not true. And you even show 8...
This is a very well summarised video with all the relevant information with only one small error - the President is not obliged to give the third mandate to the third political party. The president can give it to any party represented in the parliament.
Let's all hear again how much better Proportional Representation is than First Past The Post.
That's like, two elections per year or something.
Lots of speculation in this video
I love what you did to show the coalition bargaining
At 6:50 , there is a fault in the video . President Radev after giving a mandate to GERB and PP , he isnt required to give it to 3rd party Revival , but can choose any of the other parties in parliament.
1 election every 4 years is already too much for me...
Only one correction! The president is not tight to give the mandate to third party. He can choose whatever he likes from the presented other option for the third mandate!
There is a lot of skepticism surrounding the elections from last sunday. There was this controversy that one of the parties got removed from parlament last second. The reason for that last-second decision was, that they didn't reach the 4% thershold, and need 29 more votes to enter parlament. Yeahh right. Something similar happened to the "Revival" party, which was 2nd place and then again when the results came in they were 3rd. Also nobody expected Peevski's party to pass Dogan's party. Peevsky is kinda universally hated by everyone.
This shitshow has been going for the past 4 years. No wonder we hit a historic low for voter turnout.
if our neighbor Bulgaria switches to a presidential system like Turkey, everything will be solved 😅
@TLDR, there are 2 BG entries in the corruption perception index graph. Of course it's Belgium, but none the less it's still an error. Otherwise, keep up your great work, one of my favourite channels.
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.
Put the tsar back in power problem solved
if 38% of the people vote for said parties, then 62% of the people don't want any of them.
Hehehe, PP...
The Bulgarian president appoints a government if the political parties can’t form one so it’s not a big deal
10 minutes video with solid 2 minutes of advertising... I start to think I must sign out. I refuse this degenerasy.
And what about 3.999????? Do you know what is happening in this moment?
Its not bad that Bulgaria has frequent elections, but that it doesn't have a working government.