"Would Elena or our new lboster from bg tell us what's up with the "New Left" coalition of the Socialist party with - according to this Reuters dispatch http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-bulgari.html - - "three small social-democratic parties"? Did the split within the Socialist party get healed? What chance of a nationwide successful anti-neoliberal backlash in the spring elections?"
Happy you are interested. Here is a (too) long effusion.
The ruling right-wing Union of Democrating Forces will get a whacking. It's potential voters have fallen more than 2 times from 53% in 1997 to 21% in May this year and are hovering around that level.
This will surely be a reaction to neo-liberal self-destruction. Consumption has fallen 3 times since 1989 and 19.1% since 1995, the last "good" year before the crisis that brought the UDF to power. This despite the fact that it sold off 50% of the national industry; only the natural monopolies and a few tidbits are still on the counter. The now private firms are in a depression because the austerity measures have left them without an internal market. Cities of 50-100 thousand have 1 or 2 factories working, the unemployed are around 17-30%, depends on who is counting. Barriers to trade were radically dismantled with the idea to attract investments in export industries; actually, in reverse, the local banks started to keep their money in foreign banks for the annuity. Bulgaria is the only country on the globe that does not subsidize it's agriculture, so canning factories this summer imported tomatoes, a traditional Bulgarian export vegetable. And half of the land (private) is barren. A bewildering health reform introduced user fees in July and a medical talliban boasted that Bulgarians had become twice more healthy - judging by the drop in patient's visits. Etc, etc. Lunacy.
Very similar to the pain of Argentina, shown in M.J.Medjeral's post. To think that before the War more Bulgarians used to emigrate to Argentina than to the US!
Yet the slap the UDF will take will not amount to a conscious choice of an alternative, because Bulgarians expect salvation to come from "the world". They think that all of the above mentioned is "modern" and they themselves are to blame if it does not work. That is why the potential electorate of the Socialists has risen much less- from around 15 to around 20%. The number will be bigger in a real election, because part of the red voters do not report their leaning to pollsters, associating them with the official anti-socialist culture in the capital.
The election prospects naturally attract coalition partners to the Socialists, especially left ones. Relations with the turk minority party "Movement for rights and freedoms" have thawed.
The mobilization in the UDF-community is troubling. Their conceptualists have announced that the Party is the only hope for Bulgaria's future in the next 20 years and a vital guarantee for the country' geopolitical orientation toward the West. For such a worthy cause no means would be criminal.
Chavdar Naidenov