Comment by Vesselin Stoynev:
Preparations for the presidential elections are beginning in Bulgaria - a year and a half before they take place. At first glance, this seems inadequate, when it is uncertain whether the government will survive even half a year, guaranteed only by the report on the eurozone and threatened by the undisguised jealousy of the leader of the party holding the mandate towards his own prime minister. However, political time is framed by election segments, and while parliamentary elections have recently been increasingly extraordinary, local and presidential elections remain only predictable with their fixed dates. The closest regular elections on the horizon are the presidential elections in late October-early November 2026, in which Rumen Radev is not allowed to run for a third time. And that is precisely why the orientation of the political forces towards them can already serve as political stilts in the swamp of political instability.
Borisov against a unified candidacy of the democratic community
The leader of the coalition partner of GERB, Rumen Hristov, chairman of the UDF, has launched the possible candidacy of Boyko Borisov for president from GERB-UDF. The leader of the DSB, Atanas Atanasov, has proposed that the candidate of the democratic community, based on the DSB, "Yes, Bulgaria" and "We continue the change", be elected through preliminary elections - as in 1996 with the rise of Petar Stoyanov from the then UDF, who prevailed over Zhelyu Zhelev.
What is the stake of the two first political forces to pave a path to the presidential elections now? First of all, it is intra-party (or intra-coalition), secondly - with a horizon for ensuring a governing partnership, because the political crisis in recent years has gone from a timid coalition (assembly), through unsuccessful coalition negotiations, to the ruling and opposition. And thirdly, it is a means of electoral mobilization at a time when political stagnation is pushing away the electoral peripheries of the parties, and the cores are losing muscle shape.
Borisov on "Dondukov" 2 is a chance to free himself from Peevski
The prospect of the GERB leader running for president has been put on the agenda more than once in recent years and has always been denied, with one mind, by Borisov himself. Now, however, it seems more likely for one main reason: this is a good chance for Borisov to free himself from Delyan Peevski's tutelage.
The president is not dependent on anyone not simply because he is less untouchable than an ordinary MP, but because he has less real power in his hands, which can be coerced into submitting to someone else's will. After all, in the presidential house and with the presidential halo, a long-time politician is much more protected because of his past, even if he does not have a trusted prosecutor general.
GERB without Borisov - a chance for a coalition with PP-DB
The prospect of Borisov becoming president, on the one hand, can mobilize GERB's electoral potential to the maximum. On the other, it opens the question of what GERB is without him. At first, the party and its voters will perceive themselves again as "Boyko's Party", with a leader who has risen to the highest place. But very soon after that, it will cease to be a leading party of its previous kind, at least its new leader will stand in the shadow of the previous one for a long time.
However, this opens a wide door for a coalition of this party, which in recent years has won elections, but either could not govern at all, or participated in (the assembly), or headed an unstable government (like the current one). Without Boyko Borisov as its leader, GERB's chance of governing together with PP-DB and without Peevski increases many times over.
The advantages of the unified candidacy around PP-DB
The preliminary elections, also called primary or internal in the self-described "democratic community", open up several political valences. One is that the actions in the next year and a half of discussion, preparation and nomination of a unified candidate will play the role of an electoral stimulant for a frozen in its electoral percentages main political representation of this community in the person of the PP-DB, which is half as small as the leader GERB. Second, the unified candidacy will be able to attract smaller formations from this spectrum, which will partner with the PP-DB in the future and in governance at the national and local levels. Third, the unified candidacy will provide the current glue of the increasingly confederal PP-DB and even if in possible early parliamentary elections before the presidential vote its two components decide to run separately, to remain united together as partners with the "personal union" of a common candidate for head of state. Last but not least, this will also to some extent reduce the leadership all-rounder in the coalition, because by the presidential vote in late autumn next year there will be a designated over-leader, who, although he will not have operational functions, will have the status of first above equals, whose authority everyone must protect and strengthen.
However, the essential question is how these requests and political games will be realized in the current long political - not only domestic-political, but also global-political - time of a year and a half. Will the government remain in power and for how long, will there be severe international upheavals, when and how technically PP-DB and partners will organize primary elections, whether Borisov will not wait until the last to announce whether he will run, will Kostadin Kostadinov or someone else be the candidate of the pro-Russian sector, whom will Rumen Radev support and whether he himself will not enter the political arena before his mandate expires.
If Borisov loses - a pension. If PP-DB are third and below - reformatting.
If next fall the presidential candidates include Boyko Borisov and a unified candidacy of the democratic community, the biggest risks for both parties are calculable now. If Borisov loses the vote, this almost certainly means political retirement, with a possible consolation prize of "honorary chairman of GERB". GERB will face the challenge of defending its position as the first political force in a new way, possibly as a very different party than the one we have known for 20 years.
A failure for the democratic community will be not only the loss, but any result after second place. Any result after second (not reaching a runoff) will most likely lead to new attempts to reformat this political space, if it has proven incapable of establishing its sustainable primary political representation for two decades.