As the economy is down in Bulgaria, politics is up. While real economy companies suffer, there is a boom of start ups, desiring to enter Parliament – and even to jump into government. And literally, campaign money is keeping afloat many businesses, including media, PR and public polling agencies and individual citizens.

The upcoming general elections on July 5 2009 are highly unpredictable as in terms of composition of Parliament as well as the composition of the post-election coalition to form a government.

Four parties are considered a sure bid to pass the four per cent threshold and another three or four can make it too, judging by the results of the European Parliament elections held a month ago.

It is still an open question whether these results can be sustained or further improved. While the basic players are known, the performance of the smaller parties will hold the key to many questions.

The distribution of seats is also very much dependent on the turnout as the lower turnout has been in favour of parties with lock votes or those rigging the elections.

Thus the swing vote will be important and any additional party with seats will make a huge difference as all of them are ambitious players with chances to be in the next government.

The "majority element" of these elections next to the proportional system will introduce an even higher uncertainty as 31 MPs out of 240 in total will be elected to different, majority. In fact, the majority candidates, despite that most of them are also party nominations, may upset many preconceived plans and coalition calculations.

The turnout expected to be higher than the 37.49 per cent in the June 2009 EP elections, but still not higher than 50 per cent and the attitude reflects both the public aversion about anything "political", record low trust in institutions as well as the belief that their voice would not matter anyway (18 per cent vs 93 per cent for the Danes in a 2008 EU-wide Eurobarometer survey), an alarming signal.

An OSCE election monitoring mission adds to the context of elections, as the organisation registered certain regress in democracy in the country – with legal hindrances to opposition parties, "vote buying" and "controlled votes" blemishing the democratic process.

A Civic Coalition for Free and Democratic Choice elections put the "controlled vote" in the 2009 European Parliament elections at 16 per cent.

As no party is expected to have a landslide victory, the elections will most likely be followed by messy negotiations to form a government.

The more parties enter Parliament, the more protracted and complicated the bargaining will be. There may be resemblances of the similar stalemate four years ago and negotiations bringing about the current uneasy tripartite coalition, led by the BSP’s Coalition for Bulgaria on the mandate of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.

Tough guys don't dance: the main contenders
The opposition centre-right GERB (Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria) of current Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov will win most of the votes as it leads in opinion polls for more than two years, won in two EP elections in 2007 and 2009 and municipal ones in 2007. But they will fall short of seats.

The problem with GERB is that it is a new party, revolving around the populist appeal of its leader Borissov, and its shaky periphery of support is unreliable.

In contrast, GERB’s arch-enemies in this campaign – the currently governing BSP and MRF parties - feature strong loyal cores and ability to mobilise supporters.

For the record, they are not formally in a coalition but their level of campaign co-ordination leaves no doubts about it.

The incumbent Bulgarian Socialist Party (ex-communists) is still the largest, most organised and able to mobilise vast support across the country.

It runs in a coalition – Coalition for Bulgaria – with smaller, satellite parties (communists, nationalists and social democrats among them) and though they add a few votes they are overshadowed by their mighty partners.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) is the Turkish minority party under the unflinching leadership of Ahmed Dogan since its establishment in 1990 and it hold the monopoly on the votes of the Turkish community as well as many Bulgarian Muslims and some Roma.

Dogan is master of identity politics and follows the principle "the worse the better" – the more threatened feels the minority the more votes for the MRF. MRF has unique place in Bulgaria’s politics as it has been virtually the king maker of every president of the country and nearly all governments as the necessary "balancer".

To complete the picture of the "big four" is the extreme nationalist Ataka party, also a relatively new creation (2005).

Ataka garners quite a lot of support not only by its nationalist (and often but racist) slogans, but also be its anti-corruption and anti-establishment rhetoric. Despite the many controversies over the leadership style party and dubious choices of candidates, it garners quite a support and it is growing, taking away supporters by bigger parties like the BSP and GERB.