The year 2007 left President Georgi Purvanov and Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev as it found them: Bulgaria’s two most powerful political figures.

And then again, not.

Both had photo opportunities of the kind of which most politicians can only dream: the European Union accession flag-waving and fireworks that opened the year, the anarchic euphoria of the welcome home for the medics returning from Libya, set-up shots with George Bush, Vladimir Putin and other faces instantly recognisable around the planet. Policy initiatives and priorities publicly adopted by both moved closer to fruition, the Belene nuclear power station project and the Bourgas-Alexandropoulis pipeline among them. Stanishev found himself in a role unprecedented for a Bulgarian politician, visiting Georgia as the point man for the EU.

Yet like all players on a stage, for both Purvanov and Stanishev the year might have well have borne with it some reminders that the next roles in which they will be cast is by no means certain.

Certainly, Purvanov had the honour, as he himself described it, of becoming the first post-communist head of state re-elected for a second term. Yet there must have been more than momentary awareness that the constitutional limit that will allow him no more than this second term means that in a few years’ time, he will be looking for a new job.

Perhaps more so for Stanishev. The Bulgarian Socialist Party of which he is leader failed in its goal of emerging decisively ahead in Bulgaria’s May elections for members of the European Parliament and in the October municipal elections. After the 2005 elections, the BSP was able to govern only by forming a coalition with Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party supported mainly by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent, and Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s party, which began 2007 as the National Movement Simeon II and ended it re-branded as the National Movement for Stability and Progress. The elections and other political events made some things clear: the untrammelled upward curve of Boiko Borissov’s Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), the continued ability of the MRF to mobilise a stable corps of voters and the declining fortunes of Saxe-Coburg’s party, which made nary a dent in either the MEP or municipal elections and shed a significant slice of its MPs as the year drew to a close. While the coalition that holds the Stanishev administration in power remained sufficiently large to stave off any calls for ahead-of-schedule parliamentary elections, notwithstanding Borissov’s defensible argument that the current Parliament does not reflect current national political sentiment, it was clear that whatever coalition emerges after the next elections, Stanishev is not guaranteed a place at its head. That November 2007 saw the coalition Cabinet survive its third parliamentary motion of no-confidence in two years - in this case, over the prolonged strike by teachers - may prove nothing more than a footnote in the long term.

Stanishev went through a number of unpleasant political necessities in 2007. Apart from a series of deputy ministers who left office, for reasons variously perceived as incompetence, inability to work with their colleagues and in one case, alleged (but unproven) corruption, and in addition to the departure from the justice portfolio of the unimpressive Georgi Petkanov, Stanishev let go Roumen Ovcharov from the powerful economy and energy ministry which was virtually  set up in 2005 as a reflection of Ovcharov’s political potency. But Ovcharov was left in place at the head of his powerful Sofia BSP constituency, and could in the long term emerge clearly within the core of an alternative leadership to that of Stanishev. However, given the scale of media and public attention to the allegations at the time against Ovcharov and other senior officials, Stanishev had no realistic option but to act by effectively firing those involved, whatever landmines this may have laid in the road ahead for a political leader who in May 2007 celebrated his 41st birthday. Notwithstanding the Government’s achievements in matters of state such as foreign policy and macro-economic stability, failing to beat off Borissov at the polls could cost Stanishev in the long term. Other notable events for Stanishev in 2007, like being the first Bulgarian head of government to travel to India in 30 years and getting through, more or less intact, his vision of a new National Security Agency, may not be strong enough CV items to save him.

But when it comes to matters of CV, it is clear that some things matter more to the Bulgarian electorate, or at least those who go to vote, than others. While it has become commonplace for cynics, participants in protests of various kinds on various issues and the usual clutch of right-wing politicians to hurl “Mafia!” as their favourite pejorative description of the current Government, it is equally clear that a past as a communist collaborator does scant harm. Purvanov, after the commission on the dossiers from the communist State Security past released a version of his file, posted it on his presidential website. Similarly, it emerged that a number of ambassadors in various European capitals had State Security dossiers, and none were recalled and there were no serious calls for them to be removed from office. When the BSP nominated a former communist-era securocrat, Brigo Asparouhov, as its candidate to be mayor of Sofia, there was speculation that he had been set up to lose as part of a purported, if incomprehensible, long-term deal with Borissov, but not a few Sofians turned out to vote for him. The story of Purvanov’s file and his identity as codename “Gotse” did not prevent his re-election to office in 2006 and this year’s confirmation in physical, downloadable form did no harm to his status as one of the two most popular figures in Bulgaria: Borissov and Purvanov were alternately number one or number two, depending which end-of-year opinion polls you chose to believe.

Whatever private cynicisms may be expressed about Stanishev and Purvanov by their detractors among the BSP’s political rivals and even in its own ranks, for both 2007 allowed them to notch up some achievements; for Purvanov this included the continuation of the theme of his achievement in appearing to act above partisan politics, but for Stanishev, New Year’s Eve deepened the waters of uncertainty on the voyage to the next elections.