It is three years since Georgi Purvanov was elected President of Bulgaria. The Sofia Echo Editor-in-Chief CLIVE LEVIEV-SAWYER assesses the performance that has made Purvanov one of the most popular figures in the country.





When Georgi Purvanov defeated Petar Stoyanov to replace him as Bulgaria's head of state, international news agencies made much of Purvanov's background as the then leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

The ouster of Stoyanov, the candidate of the centre-right parties, was seen as signalling that Bulgaria was reversing itself towards its "socialist past". In other words, a suggestion from these agencies that the choice of Purvanov was a symptom of a disillusionment with the post-communist present and a longing for the certainties of the communist past.

The complexities were greater than these, and the context was different. Stoyanov fell victim to the same disillusionment and apathy that had cost Ivan Kostov the premiership a few months before in 2001, and handed the role of head of government to Simeon Saxe-Coburg, the former boy king returned from exile, who cannot be said to have a communist or socialist past.

On top of this, there was at the time a theory that Purvanov had been set up for a fall by his opponents within the BSP. Failure to win the election would have served as the catalyst for ousting him from his role and profile as party leader. While by law he had to quit as party leader to become head of state - a role deemed by the constitution to be non-partisan - the opportunity the Presidency has given him has done nothing to diminish his stature. Nor his political future. According to the most recent polls, released on November 4, Purvanov's personal popularity is second highest in the country, beaten only by that of Interior Ministry chief secretary Boiko Borissov. At 67 per cent, Purvanov's rating is more than double than that of his successor as BSP leader, Sergei Stanishev. It is also vastly higher than that of Saxe-Coburg.

The Bulgarian constitution enjoins the head of state to be "a President for all Bulgarians".

On the face of it, Purvanov has not done a bad job of what the constitution requires of him. But nor has he been a passive, benignly vacant, super-village-mayor, confining himself to opening things and turning out to utter platitudes on national occasions.

While widely perceived as maintaining ties to his party, few would accuse him publicly of having been a spokesperson for it since becoming President. This is a measure of political distance remarkable for someone who has a substantial Bulgarian Communist Party - Bulgarian Socialist Party pedigree. Purvanov, born in June 1957, joined the BCP in 1981 as a researcher, in 1994 was elected its deputy leader, and in 1996 became leader, winning re-election in 2000.

Yet, there have been few political stories of significance that he has stayed out of as President, whether by design or accident.

He has used his power of veto to return legislation to Parliament on a number of occasions. This has led to legislation being amended in line with his wishes more than once. Among the most recent instances of this was in July, when Parliament approved a changed version of the Family Allowances Act, deleting clauses that Purvanov had vetoed.

The changed version meant that all women with six-month contributory service are eligible for a maternity allowance. The initial version, rejected by Purvanov, required four months of service in the year before the maternity leave. His argument was that Bulgaria's demographic crisis and extremely low birth rate call for measures to encourage childbirth, rather than for restrictions.

Steps like these could not fail to assist Purvanov's popularity.

More re-cently, in Octo-ber, Purvanov held a special news conference to decry the National Health Insurance Fund and the Government moving against people with overdue health insurance contributions. With directness, Purvanov described the move as "illegal". Press coverage portrayed him as the white knight coming to the aid of the millions of people at risk of being denied medical treatment. Detractors suggested he was being populist. A week later, in one of his regular briefings for journalists covering the Presidency, Purvanov said he was "happy" that his position was supported by "institutions, experts, the media and citizens".

Another move that endeared him to the hearts of Bulgarians was the leading and very public role he played in backing up an appeal against Bulgarian gymnast Yordan Yovchev being awarded silver in the men's rings finals at the 2004 Olympics in Athens. Purvanov, like many Bulgarians if not the judges and the appeal body, said he believed that Yovchev deserved the gold medal.

Again, in the Yochev incident, whether Purvanov was speaking for all Bulgarians or whether he was being populist is a matter of perceptions and perspective.

The Yovchev incident was a straightforward matter.

Others have not been. While not to the extent that it has in other countries, the question of involvement in Iraq has been divisive in Bulgaria. The parties from whose gene pool Purvanov sprang have been critical of the deployment of Bulgarian troops, and have attempted to have them recalled. But Purvanov, while reportedly at odds with the Government as a whole and the Defence Ministry in particular at various stages of the Iraq issue, over questions from the principle of the deployment to the matter of relocating troops, gained wide public respect by donning uniform and flying to Iraq to visit the troops of whom he is, constitutionally speaking, the Commander in Chief. In doing so, he did something that the Prime Minister whose Government led Bulgaria into the war has not.

As President, Purvanov has gone on a number of official visits and has received a wide range of foreign heads of state and of government. Going by the official communiques, which of course veteran journalists who have covered such engagements know do not always accurately reflect what was actually said behind closed doors, Purvanov's conversations often are on matters of substance, rather than mere exchanges of courtesies. The Purvanov Presidency has involved itself in matters related to trade, investment and economic ties. This is, of course, a discretion a Bulgarian President is able to exercise, given that constitutionally the office is not purely limited to a ceremonial role. It has also been remarked within Bulgaria that the Saxe-Coburg style of handling the Prime Ministership has created a vacuum within national leadership that Purvanov, a young man whose public career is unlikely to be over when his term of office ends, has the opportunity to fill.

Purvanov has not been without his controversies, as noted above.

When the Barrelgate affair erupted, following media reports that certain individuals, parties and companies around the world had received large consignments of fuel from Saddam Hussein's regime, critics sought to link the allegations to Purvanov. At the time the BSP was reported to have received fuel from the Iraqi regime, Purvanov was its leader. He has rejected all allegations suggesting a link between him and these reported deals, and was reported to have said that he was considering court action against a Wash-ington newspaper that conveyed them.

Purvanov has in recent months issued acid criticism of the Central Intelligence Agency for a report alleging Bulgarian involvement in illegal arms deals with the former Iraqi regime.

"Iraq is not their strong point," Purvanov said of the CIA, referring to agency reports prior to the current Iraq war that said that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. These reports remain unproven. He said the CIA report about alleged illegal activity by Bulgarian firms may have been based on the authors reading "old newspapers, which is not good for any intelligence".

Purvanov was similarly acerbic about the recent revival of the idea of opening communist-era State Security dossiers. The proposal, supported by most centre-right parties and by the governing National Movement Simeon II, was dismissed by Purvanov as "outdated" and a sign that elections were on the way, because it resurfaced whenever months of campaigning were on their way. Purvanov said he did not believe it work as an election issue for those who had raised it.

Purvanov is perhaps not quite the Teflon President that Ronald Reagan was said to have been, but sticky issues do not seem to have the habit of remaining stuck, or in one notable case, other people eventually seem to come around to his point of view.

When he suggested that Bulgaria hold a referendum on whether to join the European Union, editors (including that of this newspaper) queued up to pour vitriol on his head for proposing an exercise that would prove costly and futile, given the extensive support within the country for EU accession.

Yet, months after Purvanov first mentioned it, the idea is gaining currency, including among the Foreign Ministry.

Speaking to journalists on October 22, Purvanov said that while at the time his proposal had drawn a negative reaction, a growing number of representatives of the government majority and some of the opposition had accepted the need for such a referendum.

The best time for such a referendum would be in the interval between the parliamentary and presidential elections so that it would not be affected by narrow partisan debates, Purvanov said.

The rate at which Purvanov has handed out the country's highest honours, including the Stara Planina, has also been of concern to some observers within Bulgaria. Among controversial nominations for recipients have been Ahmed Dogan, still actively involved in politics and with controversial allegations surrounding his past, and Patriarch Maxim, the head of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church whose detractors allege that he was appointed with the collusion of the communist party as part of its subversion of the church. While it is not always entirely a matter of Purvanov's initiative about who gets such awards, for example with the one for Maxim having been proposed by the Cabinet, it is not publicly known whether he has ever refused to hand one out.

His relations with the Government continue to be complex, and are likely to continue to be so. There have been reports of him protesting against what he sees as public intimidation by the Foreign Ministry about who they want him to appoint as ambassadors. This continuing difference of opinion is said to be the reason for continuing vacancies at some embassies.

Purvanov sits near the top of the polls, groomed and exuding confidence.Whatever perceptions there may be about him, whether augmenting his popularity or viewing him as populist, it cannot be forgotten that the work and style of a Presidency is not determined alone by an individual. It may be that Purvanov has a media machine that operates more effectively than most others in Government, and more effectively than than of the Cabinet, for that matter. Nor should it be forgotten that in this era in Bulgarian politics, the place and popularity Purvanov occupies in national leadership may indeed be in part because of a vacuum left by others.