Bulgaria’s ruling party, the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (known by its Bulgarian abbreviation as GERB) has shed about seven per cent support in the past few months to a current 31 per cent, according to a survey by the ASSA-M agency.
 
GERB came to power after winning about 41 per cent of votes in Bulgaria’s July 2009 national parliamentary elections.
 
In its first months in power, opinion polls saw it soar in popularity, to the point that some analysts suggested that snap elections would see Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s party win an absolute majority in Parliament.
 
But ASSA-M’s Mihail Mirchev said that GERB now had 31 per cent, meaning about 300 000 to 400 000 supporters no longer stood with the party.
 
However, those votes did not seem to have gone elsewhere.
 
Support for other parties was unchanged. Sergei Stanishev’s Bulgarian Socialist Party, formerly the majority party in the governing coalition voted out of power in 2009, had 11 per cent.
 
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party led and supported in the main by Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity and which served in the two previous governing coalitions, had five per cent – as did its bête noire, Volen Siderov’s ultra-nationalist party Ataka.
 
The centre-right Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria had 2.8 per cent and Yane Yanev’s Order Lawfulness and Justice party – which recently withdrew its support from Borissov’s Government after a political row – had 1.6 per cent.
 
The centre-right Union of Democratic Forces, which is in coalition with the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria has 1.5 per cent, and the National Movement for Stability and Progress, formed around former monarch Simeon Saxe-Coburg but now led by former cabinet minister Hristina Hristova, had 0.4 per cent.
 
Speaking on December 22 2009, Borissov said that in two months, his Government had managed to achieve more than its predecessors had in four years.
 
He said that GERB - which governs single-handedly, having decided against a coalition – would make Bulgaria look completely different in four years should it manage to complete its term in office.
 
For the Borissov Government, there have been a number of successes, including the unblocking of European Union funds and a recent high-profile operation in which alleged members of a kidnapping gang were arrested.
Controversies that have attended the Government recently included a decision by Borissov to endorse a campaign by Ataka to hold a national referendum on whether daily special news bulletins in Turkish on public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television should continue. In the face of widespread negative reaction to the move, Borissov backed down.
 
The Government also has had to grapple with the continuing economic crisis in Bulgaria which, among other effects, has severely constrained the Government’s capacity to spend.
 
It has become clear to what extent the crisis has affected Bulgaria. On December 16, Bulgarian National Bank figures showed that foreign direct investment in the country from January to October 2009 was 2.3 billion euro, substantially down from the equivalent period of 2008, when it added up to 5.8 billion euro.
 
In October 2009, FDI was only 11.4 million euro, no more than two per cent of FDI in Bulgaria in October 2008.