> 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.
Yes, but in BG this doesn't seem to translate into a correspondingly
dramatic change in vote distribution (non-voters, last-minute-swingers, etc)
> Etc, etc.
> Lunacy.
You don't have to be crazy but it helps... (sorry, couldn't resist this
quote :o)
> 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.
Maybe you are on to smth here but I think that it's mostly the
disillusionment with the /lack of/ potential of the current political system
to delegate any real power to the voters - once X grabs the power, there's
no stopping them, and they plunder on like there's no tomorrow. At all
levels. There's no feedback, no control mechanism. Xs and antiXs will get
away whatever they do or not do. Besides, Bg political decisions are so
bound up with external realities, that there's more to "looking at the
world for clues", than blaming it on the sheeple who do not trust themselves
with their own salvation. The fact that so many people survive, on a day to
day basis, is a miracle to me, yes, and it wouldn't have happened if they
were just waiting like a damsel in distress. The problem is, this means
being overworked and underpaid, work in dangerous hazardous conditions, with
no social and health security, etc. And the divide - strategy still happily
rules: mum-n-pap businesses look jealous towards teachers on state-budget
payroll who envy doctors their extra 5 USD a month who blame it on nurses
who despise workers which look down on largely unemployed engineers cos they
get the larger unemployment benefit and drive taxis off the record, to say
nothing of those stupid minorities who are undereducated and good for
nothing except stealing and prostitution, anyway, but have some political
power to reduce your slice of the cheesecake.
> That is why the potential
> electorate of the Socialists has risen much less- from around 15 to
> around 20%.
I think the problem is the failure to deliever a clear unifying message and
settle their own bickerings which make me sincerely doubt anything has
really progressed beyond palace farce so far.
> Relations with the turk minority party
> "Movement for rights and freedoms" have thawed.
Which is a good thing but nothing's final yet, it seems.
> 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.
Yeah, the UDF is a powerful myth creator :o) They sent the whole country
into the psychosis of inventing our middle-classness, discovering our
Europeanness and traditional Christian values, measuring the degree of our
civillised-ness and entrepreneurship... And those who haven't individually
joined the EC or the rest of the civillised world (i.e. emigrated) are still
on this treadmill, it seems... They do have catchy slogans...