Volen Siderov, the beleaguered leader of Bulgaria’s ultra-nationalist party Ataka, says that he is being conspired against. Unlike most of Siderov's outlandish conspiracy theories, his political paranoia may not, in this case, be entirely misplaced.
 
Siderov’s words in describing this assault on his political life are characteristically extreme. In a December 22 interview with public broadcaster Bulgarian National Television (in itself not one of Siderov’s favourite institutions, because of – among other things – its daily afternoon news broadcasts in Turkish), he said that Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s ruling party GERB had launched a "criminal operation" against him.
 
GERB wanted Ataka disposed of in a series of manoeuvres to ensure that the ruling party would always be able to be sure of enough votes in Parliament to approve laws. At the same time, Siderov said, GERB wanted Siderov "punished" for his criticisms of the Government.
 
The year 2011 has been a grim one for Ataka.
 
May saw its supporters clash outside the Banya Bashi mosque in central Sofia with Muslims at their Friday prayers. Siderov alleges one-sided behaviour by the police in arresting only his supporters.
 
It was the Banya Bashi incident that precipitated a falling-out with GERB, which Ataka generally has supported since the July 2009 elections resulted in Borissov’s party coming to power with a minority government.
 
In turn, the steadily worsening relations with GERB have run in parallel with a number of MPs quitting Ataka’s group. Having started with 21 MPs after the 2009 elections, Ataka now has 10, meaning that it has been cut to the minimum required to maintain a parliamentary group.
 
The 2011 elections made things much worse for Siderov. His party’s estrangement from Borissov’s Government was made complete, and Ataka’s dismal performance in the presidential and municipal elections led to calls for Siderov to step down as leader – though those calls were led by his stepson, against a background of the fragmentation of Siderov’s marriage; estrangement appears to be a defining theme for Siderov in 2011.
 
Worse, for someone whose ultra-nationalism almost by definition requires him to portray himself as a pillar of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church (his previous writings and statements have led to allegations against him of, among other things, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism), Siderov was alleged to have been involved in an inappropriate relationship with a senior member of the party. He denies the allegations.
 
Even Katounitsa, the late summer incident in a village that saw ethnic tensions soaring and sparked countrywide anti-Roma marches, failed to translate into electoral gains of any significance for Siderov, whose acerbic views on Roma have long been part of his stock-in-trade. Even his enemies, it seems, could not inspire new friends for him.
His party conference this week was fraught with bathos. Preceded the same day by the announcement that four MPs were quitting Ataka’s parliamentary group, congress proceedings themselves were held up by a bomb hoax.
 
The news of the congress, where loyalists reaffirmed Siderov’s leadership, got Siderov on television, but his critics also made the rounds of talk shows.
 
One of the most searing allegations against Siderov came from a former ally that Bulgarian-language media reports called a "dissenter" who said that the only party that was not an enemy of Ataka was the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.
 
Considering that the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, led by Ahmed Dogan, is supported and led in the main by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent (it hardly needs pointing out that they are on the long list of people that Siderov does not like*), this was heady stuff.
 
Worse still, "dissenter" Kamen Petkov told television station bTV that Siderov had been involved an alleged conspiracy to hamstring a parliamentary investigation into Dogan’s financial dealings involving the controversial Tsankov Kamuk project. Siderov denies these allegations, to put it mildly.
 
Further, going by Bulgarian-language media reports, it seems that if Siderov believes that he hears the sound of chiselling at the foot of his battered little pedestal, it may not be his imagination.
 
According to news website Mediapool, a conspiracy is afoot to implode what remains of Ataka’s parliamentary group. Not only that; once the numbers are sufficient, those who have quit would get together to re-form an Ataka parliamentary group, but a Siderov-free one.
 
Parliament’s rules of procedure do not allow mergers or formations of new parliamentary groups. But, so the theory goes, nothing stops one that has collapsed being resuscitated.
 
Reportedly, the group that intends the manoeuvre have taken their cues from Yane Yanev, who supposedly has been trying the same thing, after his troubled relations with Borissov were followed swiftly by resignations from his Order Law and Justice party group and its subsequent collapse. (After Siderov withdrew his support from GERB, after the October 2011 elections, Yanev did a turnabout from his previous "radical opposition" to GERB to become a "constructive opposition". This latter term has meant voting in support of GERB.)
 
Money is at play as well. One former Ataka MP has announced that she has asked to join GERB, presumably ruling her out from the supposed plan for an Ataka Reloaded parliamentary group, while reports say that others who have quit have asked for their parliamentary subsidies to be transferred to GERB.
 
Borissov scathily told journalists that he was not interested in their money, which GERB did not need. He dismissively added that it was a long time since he had taken any interest in what was going on with Ataka.
 
For Siderov, if the history of the implosion of Yanev’s parliamentary group is to be repeated with Siderov’s, there may be one possible consolation. After the 2005 elections, Ataka had 21 MPs, but then lost so many that its parliamentary group collapsed. After the 2009 elections, it returned with 21 MPs (several different ones, obviously).
 
So Siderov could hang on until the next parliamentary elections and hope to return with, well, 21 MPs or so. However, the one thing wrong with this picture is that another bit of history could repeat itself – the lacklustre turnout for Ataka in October 2011, which if the trend continues, would put Ataka at risk of gaining no seats at all in Bulgaria’s next Parliament.
 
* (It should not go unrecorded that Siderov's enemies list also includes US ambassador in Sofia James Warlick, whom Siderov sees as having a leading role in the conspiracy against him; Siderov's view of the foreign policy priorities of Washington is engagingly unique.)