The campaign season for the municipal elections scheduled for October 28 has begun, and it is to be hoped that these elections will be fought on the basis of substance rather than smears.
The media will be a key player in these elections, and it is to be hoped that gullibility and other shortcomings do not contribute to attempts to mislead those being called on to vote.
Given that Bulgaria has no history of purging from public life through legislative means those compromised by association with its communist past, and given that the process of examining communist-era dossiers has had a belated start and may have been compromised already, it is likely that many old skeletons will be exhumed to walk again. In some cases, this may have some relevance, given that some candidates were unquestionably closely associated with the security structures of the former state. Further, it seems that any number of today's notables indeed had some degree of association with that past, to the extent that such collaboration may have been so commonplace that all such attempted smears may cancel each other out. That said, it is regrettable that invoking old dossiers has been such a routine practice in all elections for more than a decade. Already, this campaign season has seen an attempt to smear Simeon Saxe-Coburg, leader of the National Movement for Stability and Progress, a smear that he has denied and in support of which no documentary evidence has come forth. The weeks ahead probably include further smears, lobbied from one or another camp against a rival.
Post-communist Bulgaria has established other campaign conventions, such as the bestowing of largesse, customarily in the form of beer and kepabche on the electorate. However, matters have moved a little beyond that, as television campaigns have become slightly more sophisticated and spin doctors have begun to use the internet and other modern telecommunication technology to better effect. It will be interesting to see whether any campaign decides to bother much with that new special category of voters in Bulgaria, European Union citizens eligible to vote, most of whom can afford their own beer and kepabche, and many of whom are unlikely to be watching television campaign adverts or may not be that interested in politics, in any country.
The mainstream electoral pool remains Bulgarian citizens, a body - going by the steady decline in voter turnout evidence in elections in recent years - disillusioned with politics and with the antics of politicians. Already opinion polls are forecasting a low turnout. Unless the candidates of larger parties refrain from basing their campaigns on superficial photo opportunities, the hiring of popular music stars and lashings of smears against their rivals, it is not likely that many potential voters will be inspired to go to the polls.
The vision and efficiency of those in municipal government has a very direct impact on quality of life. Voters would be well advised to scrutinise candidates as if they were considering, for example, hiring a business manager, a foreman or even a farm manager. Candidates should be judged on their past performances in the real world of problem-solving (and, for that matter, whether there is genuine proof of something in their past rendering them morally unfit for public office), on their visions for what the future could be, and on the degree to which their programmes of action are realistic, affordable, and possible to implement during their terms of office. Everything else is irrelevant and of no substance.
