If Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov formed a party today, it would reap at least 31.1 per cent of the vote, polling agency Mediana said.

Also according to the agency, the ultra-nationalist party Ataka seems on its way to the second strongest political force. Results of the survey appeared in the Bulgarian-language newspapers Trud and 24 Chassa.

Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), one of the archenemies of Ataka, is currently the second most powerful party in Bulgaria. The MRF has unsettled Ataka and appears to be ruffling the feathers even of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and National Movement Simeon II (NMSII), MRF’s ruling partners. One reason is the thriving popularity of the MRF, which goes hand-in-hand with growing Ataka support.

 Apart from being the second most significant political force in Bulgaria, the MRF has managed to recruit more and more ethnic Bulgarian members in the 16 years of its existence, and now boasts 15 per cent of its 95 000 adherents to be ethnic Bulgarian, Bulgarian daily Dnevnik reported.

In Sliven, which will be the nesting place of the future joint US-Bulgaria base, 30 per cent of MRF municipal members are Bulgarian. More than a third of the MRF structures in Veliko Turnovo are also Bulgarian. The MRF has tightened its grip on many Bulgarian towns like Bourgas, Haskovo, Svoge, Velingrad and others. MRF members sometimes “own” whole towns and have huge political and economic influence, Dnevnik said.

Bulgarian political and economic leaders join the party knowing that the MRF rewards loyal leaders with popularity and good business chances. Many current MRF members are defectors from other parties.

Commenting on the phenomenal MRF influence, Movement for Rights and Freedoms MP and mayor of Velingrad Fidel Beev told Dnevnik that each party aims to lure local leaders, but the MRF simply does it better.

At a news conference on March 15, Prime Minister and BSP leader Sergei Stanishev admitted for the first time that the MRF abused administrative power and said that this abuse was also sometimes on an ethnic basis.

“I am convinced that the MRF leadership and its leaders understand this subtle nuance,” he said. The poor political culture of some party representatives in certain regions often was an obstacle to appropriate coalition co-operation, he said.

In an interview with television station bTV, Kemal Eyup, head of the Commission for Protection Against Discrimination, said that he saw no sign of ethnic discrimination and unrest in Bulgaria and that the committee had received no serious discrimination complaints. Eyup was commenting on a report in Bulgarian-language newspaper Monitor that many Bulgarians had quit the Dulovo “bastion” of the MRF in the Sliven region because local MRF leaders did not let people who had not voted for the party get jobs. The newspaper quoted Dulovo citizen Anton Meshterov, who has been unemployed since 1999 because the MRF repeatedly thwarted his business endeavours. Meshterov is now leader of local Ataka structures and said that, paradoxically, a growing number of ethnic Turks unhappy with Dogan are joining the ranks. 

In an earlier Dulovo and Silistra drama on March 6, Ataka branches threatened to sue the deputy-head of the BSP supreme council for claiming that Ataka was  financed by companies in the grey economy that have interest in blocking Bulgaria’s European Union membership. In fact, the massive March 3 Ataka-organised rally in Sofia, which later grew into anti-Turk demonstrations, was meant to be the official start of the denunciation of Bulgaria’s EU plans.

Before starting their anti-EU march, however, Ataka had tried to lobby EU MPs in 2005 to sign a declaration against “the lack of democracy and equal treatment toward political parties in Bulgaria”. The lobby reaped 10 out of 732 possible votes and the undisciplined behaviour of Ataka EU observers eventually made MEPs cast them out of parliament.

But most Ataka supporters say that they are not anti-EU activists but disgruntled Bulgarians looking for an alternative to the current Bulgarian political elite who have been recycling and stagnating since the 1990s. Even Borissov is ready to chirp along with a tune of disappointment, although a possible Borissov party would not oppose EU membership.

Talks about a possible Borissov-Ataka alignment, nevertheless, alarmed the coalition some weeks ago. There was some basis for concern: both Ataka and Borissov want to corrode the establishment and “create something vital”, as Borissov said, that would stop the warbling of loud politicians like Kosotov and Stanishev.

Indeed, the reaction of Stanishev to Ataka rallies on February 19 (the day Bulgaria commemorated the hanging of one of its national heroes, Vassil Levski) and on March 3 (Bulgaria’s national liberation holiday) was quite loudmouthed, politically rash and eventually Ataka-serving.

An impression arises that the polarising and profound messages and behaviour of some political forces, notably Ataka, Borissov, and the MRF, are resonating with sections of the electorate, even when some of those messages include - as they do in the case of Ataka - vitriol against “foreign” political forces, a reference to the MRF and also to Western powers.

At the same time, given their apparent growing advantage, the MRF appears to be mulling over ways to increase their power at local level when the time comes for the next round of municipal elections.