Vasil Tonchev before FACTS: The people who sat behind Gorica Kozhareva could have played the situation smarter

The presidency continues the constitutional procedure of appointing a caretaker government. The head of state holds meetings and talks with the persons specified in the basic law who can be appointed acting prime minister. In what direction are we moving… Sociologist Vasil Tonchev spoke to FAKTI.

- Mr. Tonchev, to one person - I mean Interior Minister Kalin Stoyanov, is the state becoming a hostage?
- Somehow it turned out that way.

- Why was Kalin Stoyanov acceptable when he was proposed as Minister of the Interior as part of Dimitar Glavchev's cabinet, but now he is not…
- There are simply strong suspicions, on the one hand, that he is close to Delyan Peevski.

- It is no longer suspected because Delyan Peevski personally said that he would invite him to be the leader of the list if he is removed from the Ministry of the Interior…
- Until now, these were suspicions that could not be dispelled, and from this point of view, the tension is rising around him.

- What are the ways out of this situation…
- We have different proposals. Boyko Borisov proposed an option for Dimitar Glavchev to remain as caretaker prime minister, and for Kalin Stoyanov to be replaced. Personally, I don't see that this will change the situation in any way. The other way out is for the parliament to intervene and for the politicians to decide, which is the most legitimate, to fill the vacant positions from which the president can choose as acting prime minister. But I think that it will be very difficult to achieve this, because the parties in the parliament are currently like “eagle, crab and pike”.

- But will there be time to supplement the “domestic book” in order to have a greater choice for the president?
- These are the legitimate procedures - to appoint permanent representatives to the various positions and on this basis the president chooses the next acting prime minister to whom he will hand a mandate. After GERB said that they would not participate in such talks, Peevski's DPS also said that they would not participate… The rest are a fragile majority that must work in sync. But how will it work, for example, “Revival“ with PP-DB? I think this is a very difficult task.

- Petar Chobanov - in his capacity as deputy governor of the BNB, also expressed his desire to be acting prime minister. Is he a possible option?
- With Petar Chobanov, we will see a similar reaction to Kalin Stoyanov.

- How do you expect the discord in the DPS to reflect on the election results?
- In general, I expect the election picture to be the same, and the division in DPS will lead to and affect the result of the party itself. In the period of democratic changes in our country, the DPS always played a central role as a balancer. But now, most likely, DPS will participate with two lists, because there the division is very deep. On this basis, the results will be very low for both formations.

- Does this mean a new opportunity for the PP-DB to somehow regain the electorate?
- No way. For all the other parties, I expect them to confirm the results they had in the last elections. And here, perhaps, comes the meaning of these elections, what new will they provide us. We see the division of DPS, otherwise there is nothing new. Maybe there is a merger with the BSP that will give a slightly better result, but I don't expect this to affect the overall picture either.

- And you say that new elections will not bring anything new, but we see what processes are going on in the DPS. This is new. And in general, in the whole political situation, after every election, something new still happens?
- What is new now is the split of the DPS, but this is not something that can change the overall picture. There is simply no new political player to rally people's hopes that things will go better, in a better direction. The President's Party is a potential such political player, but we see that he is currently holding on to office. And another such new entity does not exist and is not on the horizon.

- Can we say that President Rumen Radev's reaction to Kalin Stoyanov was expected?
- Yes, because the positions were very firm on both sides. Those who sat behind Gorica Kozhareva could have played it much more flexibly and smarter. One of Kalin Stoyanov's deputies in the Ministry of the Interior could simply have been added to her list, which would have been accepted, but in reality there would have been nothing new in the situation. In this way, the people around Kozhareva would have achieved their goals, but this firm standing behind the name of Kalin Stoyanov blew up the situation.

- And we actually fell into a situation where it is not known when we will have elections. The procedure can be delayed quite a while?
- Here, I don't think things will drag on, but it would be good to skip the date of November 5, when the US elections are held. Because many of the things, I'm talking about globally, and this reflects on us, will be different afterwards.

- Do you mean it matters whether Donald Trump or Kamala Harris will enter the White House?
- Of course, it is very important which of the two will become the president of the USA. After that, he will figure out where and in what direction the wind will blow. The difference between Trump and Harris is huge – both in terms of the war in Ukraine, and in terms of relations with the EU, and in foreign policy terms in general. The political situation will be completely different.

- If President Radev still doesn't like any minister in every next draft cabinet, when can we have real elections?
- The president cannot delay indefinitely, because he will cross all kinds of limits, but he can pressure the deputies in the parliament to do some things, so that he has a greater choice. But this will still be with some time limit. For example, some elections on November 10 - a symbolic date, in my opinion, are quite realistic.

- But does this mean that we have some 20 days in which we have to make it so that we have an official office?
- The situation in our country cannot tolerate much delay, because Bulgaria cannot sit in such an uncertain situation. This is harmful everywhere! The state apparatus is not working, and we have problems to solve - including things like Schengen and the Eurozone. So politicians should behave much more responsibly. The deep problem in our country is that we only see what is on the surface. For example, when we talk about Kalin Stoyanov. And, in fact, the deep problem in our country is that the criteria have been lost in our politics, that all those who are in the parliament act without a compass, without a long-term perspective of why they are there.

- Somehow everyone acts for himself…
- Yes, they are literally, as we said, like “eagle, crab and pike”. We see some common groups with 15-20-25 people each, who want them to be mandate holders, to determine the course of the state, to nominate the relevant persons in the state institutions. This is inadequate. They hyperbolize their rights, they forget what part of the electorate they represent in order to have such claims. Otherwise, we see such claims from everyone – and from ITN, let's go through Peevski's DPS, let's go through PP-DB, who wanted to control all the power with 64 deputies. Things don't work out and we see what results all this leads to.