A NATIONAL asset.

That is how, in 2005, Meglena Kouneva, European Integration Minister and the only member of the Cabinet to keep her portfolio when the Simeon Saxe-Coburg Cabinet gave way to the post-election tripartite Cabinet, described her former Prime Minister.

It was Saxe-Coburg, according to Kouneva, who was the strongest asset in Bulgaria’s campaign to join the European Union as scheduled in January 2007.

(It may indeed be best to say, “January 2007” because it was Saxe-Coburg, when he was Prime Minister, who said that Bulgaria would join the EU on January 2 2007 because in Bulgaria, January 1 is a public holiday. It is a mark of his deadpan manner of delivery that no one was sure whether he was joking.)

The year 2005 saw the latest transition in Saxe-Coburg’s life. In the 1940s, he was Bulgaria’s boy king, until the post-World War 2 communist government abolished the monarchy through a referendum, and sent Saxe-Coburg into exile. Post-communism, Saxe-Coburg returned, his eyes set on again becoming head of state, this time as President, given that Bulgaria’s post-communist constitution made no reference to a monarch. He was thwarted in this ambition, because of the rule that to be eligible for election as President, a candidate must have lived continuously in the country for the previous five years. Instead, at the head of the National Movement Simeon II, he was elected Prime Minister after the June 17 2001 elections.

Remote and austere, ill at ease with the Bulgarian media, his term in office as Prime Minister saw a steady decline in personal popularity. Opinion polls during his term showed that some of his ministers and officials, notably then-finance minister Milen Velchev and then-Interior Ministry chief secretary Boiko Borissov, were more popular than he was.

The June 25 parliamentary elections brought down the curtain on his performance as Prime Minister.

Generally, credit was given to the Saxe-Coburg Cabinet for keeping Bulgaria on a firmly pro-Western, market economy path. The year 2004 saw Bulgaria admitted to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Saxe-Coburg’s government achieved a fine balancing act in maintaining very good relations with the European Union and with the United States, even on foreign policy issues where the viewpoints of some EU members diverged from those of the US.

But the Saxe-Coburg government left office without having achieved major privatisations, including those of tobacco giant Bulgartabac and flag carrier Bulgaria Air.

His government signed a concession on Trakia Highway, only to see this concession speed into controversy. Failing where predecessor governments had failed, on Bulgaria’s most intractable foreign policy issue, the trial of a group of Bulgarian medics in Libya, Saxe-Coburg’s government had to - as with a number of other issues - leave it to its predecessors to resolve.

As regards to Kouneva’s assertion about Saxe-Coburg being Bulgaria’s greatest asset in relation to EU accession, history will record that it was under his government that the accession treaty with the EU was signed, on April 25. Oddly, Saxe-Coburg managed to commit what some in Bulgaria saw as a faux pas at the signing ceremony, by delivering his speech in French, when his Romanian counterpart chose to speak initially briefly in English, and then mostly in his native language. It was a characteristic Saxe-Coburg moment: he chose to use French, one of the languages of his hosts in Luxembourg, the venue for the ceremony, rather than speak in Bulgarian. However, this may be regarded as a footnote: the fact of the signing is what will endure in history.

The closing days of the Saxe-Coburg government were swept away in the devastating floods that hit Bulgaria in the summer of 2005. Opinions vary as to the speediness and effectiveness of the official response. What is beyond dispute is that there was criticism that it took some time for the military to be deployed to assist.  As hundreds of families were left homeless, and after small householders and farmers had seen their livelihoods swept away, it took some time before Saxe-Coburg went on a personal tour of inspection of the disaster that had hit the country of which he had stewardship.

When the elections were over, and the difficult process of coalition negotiations began, it seemed that the sole issue of importance to Saxe-Coburg was whether he could continue in office as Prime Minister. When a deal was reached whereby Sergei Stanishev would head the coalition Cabinet, Saxe-Coburg’s only role was to serve as one of three members of a political council of the leaders of the three coalition partners, and he stayed outside the Cabinet.

Two questions endured as the year ended. The first was the future of his party, including a return to the debate about changing its name, even though the latest proposal to gain currency was simply to add the words “New Democracy” to the existing name.

In many ways, it remained clear that the party operated in monarchical style. In the mayoral election in Sofia in October, it was some time after other parties had put forward their candidates and, in fact, on the deadline for nominations, that Saxe-Coburg returned from travel abroad to decree that Velchev would be the NMSII mayoral candidate.

Subsequently, asked about the reasons for his defeat - he placed a poor fourth - Velchev named the tardiness of the party in deciding its candidate as among the deciding factors.

The other question is whether Saxe-Coburg will stand as a candidate in the parliamentary elections in 2006.

Saxe-Coburg may be outside the Cabinet and outside Parliament, but he continues to be a political actor and a political factor, and there are those still keen to keep him under attack. One issue has become a hardy annual, and that is whether his acquisition of substantial properties through the post-communist restitution process was legitimate.

This question was raised again in early December, when Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria leader Ivan Kostov called on Prosecutor-General Nikola Filchev to formally investigate the acquisitions.

Many who have worked closely with Saxe-Coburg or who have accompanied him on foreign visits praise him as a polished backroom diplomat who operates with assurance and skill. While ill at ease with the public and with the domestic media, Saxe-Coburg should not be underestimated as a political strategist, whatever his lack of the common touch and his penchant for operating only with a tightly closed circle of confidantes.

He may perhaps, in 2006, decide to pursue the office of head of state, seeking thus to return to the office he once held, albeit in different constitutional form.

It is known that he prefers to be addressed as “Your Majesty”. While he retains a measure of personal popularity, it is an open question whether the voting public of Bulgaria, disillusioned as they are with the political establishment and given their rejection of his government, will want to return him as head of state.