A week from the October 28 municipal elections in Bulgaria, polling agencies agree on one thing when it comes to the question of who will be the next Sofia mayor – that the outcome of the battle for Sofia will most certainly be decided on a second round where the current Sofia mayor will meet either Martin Zaimov, nominated by the two right-wing parties the Union of Democratic Forces and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, or Brigo Asparouhov, backed by the Bulgarian Socialist Party. The biographies and political past of the two candidates reveal the two sides of the coin called Bulgaria’s post-communist development. PETAR KOSTADINOV, News Editor of The Sofia Echo, reports.
Martin Zaimov: Duty and impulse
Zaimov is the latest of many figures in Bulgaria’s political life that are denied the possibility of standing for president. According to the constitution, a candidate for president must have been born within the borders of the country, a rule that excludes Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev (born in Ukraine) and Speaker of Parliament Georgi Pirinski (born in the US) from any presidential race. For Zaimov, born in Geneva in 1962, this means only one thing: he can only stand for Parliament or to be mayor. On September 3, he chose the latter option.
When Zaimov was announced as the right-wing candidate for Sofia mayor, many Bulgarians were surprised by the news. At a time when the popularity of current Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov seems boundless, few people intending a serious political career were willing to defy his supremacy. The two main right-wing parties, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB) had learnt this the hard way, having failed to come up with a joint candidate for months. The fates of former UDF leader Nadezhda Mihailova and of Bulgarian Socialist Party MP Tatyana Doncheva were good examples of the political price to be paid for losing Sofia mayoral elections.
Bearing that in mind, the question that everybody was asking on September 3 was about the motive behind Zaimov’s candidacy. He had a simple answer.
Speaking on commercial national television Nova Televisia after he was nominated by the UDF and the DSB, Zaimov offered two reasons: duty and impulse. The duty, he said, was to change Sofia from a city that had all the problems a post-communist city could have into a friendly and nice environment with bicycle lanes and streets free of traffic. As for the impulse, Zaimov said that was how he had lived his life. He could be trusted on those two things.
The word “duty” has a special place in Zaimov’s family history, a history that has become an issue within the election campaign. Zaimov’s great grandfather Stoyan Zaimov was one of the close associates of Bulgaria’s national hero and revolutionary Vassil Levski at the time when Bulgarians were preparing their struggle against 500 years of Ottoman rule. Zaimov’s grandfather, General Vladimir Zaimov, was among Bulgaria’s most respected war heroes, praised by communist Bulgaria as a fighter against Nazi Germany. Vladimir Zaimov was executed in 1941 by the authorities as a Soviet spy. This family background made some hard-core supporters of the UDF and the DSB, two of Bulgaria’s most anti-communist parties, question the choice of Martin Zaimov. For two weeks the grandfather Martin Zaimov had never known became a serious enough factor for UDF leader Plamen Youroukov to find himself explaining that the communists had rewritten history and had used Zaimov’s grandfather for propaganda.
This moment of the election campaign was the first challenge for Zaimov that showed his attitude towards Bulgarian politics. Instead of going into a debate about his grandfather, Zaimov said flatly that his grandfather’s past was not an issue for him.
Zaimov’s straightforwardness could not be questioned. He was not afraid to call Minko Gerdjikov, UDF candidate for Sofia mayor in 2005 a “completely incompetent person”, much like he called Toshko Dobrev, from his own Democratic Party, an “unfortunate mistake”. Dobrev was head of Sofiyski Imoti, the municipal real estate company. A company that today is a synonym for large-scale corruption in Sofia.
For the first time since the fall of communism, a right-wing candidate was refusing to discuss issues related to communism, which for some hard-core right-wing supporters undoubtedly must have come as a shock. However, a short overview of Zaimov’s professional career goes some way to explaining his approach.
For those familiar with Bulgaria’s post-communist days, Zaimov is not that unknown.
A graduate in electronics at Sofia’s Technical University, Zaimov also has a major in macroeconomics from the London School of Economics. With a British national as a father, Zaimov had few problems working in Western Europe after the fall of communism in 1989. He had worked for the French companies Biss and Louis Dreyfus and for Louis Dreyfus again in Bulgaria. His first big success as a professional came soon after 1989. In 1991, Zaimov together with Levon Hampartzoumian, current CEO of UniCredit Bulbank established and headed the Bulgarian Audit Company. The two later sold the company to Coopers & Lybrand.
Someone as active as Zaimov could not languish without taking part in Bulgaria’s public life in the days of the big changes. However, he did so without ostentation, joining the small Democratic Party, part of the wider coalition that was the Union of Democratic Forces. By so doing, Zaimov avoided the turmoil of big politics and all the negative consequences attached to it. Eventually, the temptation of big politics proved too much of a challenge for him and in 1997 Zaimov became deputy minister of trade and tourism in the caretaker government of Stefan Sofianski, in February-May 1997.
In July the same year came Zaimov’s biggest challenge so far. He was appointed deputy governor of Bulgarian National Bank (BNB) and chairman of the Currency Board with a six-year term of office. His work as head of the Currency Board earned Zaimov a positive reputation among right-wing and left-wing parties as a respected financial expert.
Such a quick step from the private sector to national politics might be difficult for most people, but not for Zaimov. He proved his impulsive, or rather practical, character by leaving BNB in 2003, a year before the end of his term.
The UDF had lost the elections in 2001 and was in deep crisis. For Zaimov that meant a step back from public life. He went back to his first love, the private sector. In 2003, not surprisingly for a man with his professional background, Zaimov became executive director and chairman of the board of Bulgarian Postbank. It took him a year to change his position again. In 2004 he left the bank and turned to the most fashionable and profitable segment of the market in Bulgaria: real estate investments. Zaimov was definitely following trends. He became chairman of the board of the real estate investment trust Park REIT. Despite the good development of Park REIT, Zaimov could not resist the temptation of going back to the banking sector and in early 2007 he became a member of the managing board of Societe Genеrale Expressbank.
This was how the election campaign found Zaimov, and following his previous experience, he did not hesitate a bit as he said, and seized the opportunity, getting the approval of Expressbank to stand for mayor.
From the moment the campaign started Zaimov proved to be an unorthodox candidate. His entire attention was concentrated at attacking the two-year rule of Borissov, and spurning any sideswipes at other candidates.
Zaimov played to that which is his strength and Borissov’s weakness: finance. Zaimov published several open letters criticising the financial policy of the municipality under Borissov’s rule. Unfortunately for him, Borissov skirted the trap and avoided direct debate on the issue. The next thing Zaimov did was to open a personal blog separate from the official election website, called I Love Sofia. Undoubtedly this innovative behaviour must have come from the year Zaimov spent abroad. In the style of a Western European politician, he spent much effort going around Sofia on a bicycle and, as he put it, “talking to ordinary people about their problems”.
The next interesting thing Zaimov undertook was his mobile election headquarters. A platform on wheels driven by a lorry could be seen once in a while on Sofia’s streets, booming out plenty of loud music. Typically for Bulgarian politics, however, the platform entered the election campaign exactly because of its size. After getting permission from the municipality, Zaimov’s people drove the campaign lorry through Borisovata Gradina, doing some damage to the surface along the way. Borissov immediately accused Zaimov of irresponsible and arrogant behaviour since Borissov’s people had just repaired the paving. A true businessman, Zaimov apologised and promised to personally cover the expenses. Zaimov’s big hit was the “live crossing” connections that he did with Sofians. In various places around the city, monitors were installed and people were able to ask questions to Zaimov who was sitting on his platform. According to some political scientists, this approach by Zaimov, an intriguing innovation in Bulgarian politics, could boost his potential to get through to a second round. However, others say that he is a little bit too modern and this may make him seem remote to ordinary people. Overall, his unquestionable reputation as a banker and businessman could be his major plus factor. While it is not usually in the nature of bankers to be impulsive, it is just this latter trait that his advisers seem keen to emphasise, the better to enable the electorate to identify with him.
Brigo Asparouhov: The General without an army
Few people had heard the name of Brigo Asparouhov before 1991 when he became head of the National Intelligence Service (NIS). The reason was simple: between 1979 and 1990 Asparouhov has been working for the secret services of communist Bulgaria in the field of foreign intelligence. This little “detail” from Asparouhov’s professional biography has served him both well and ill. In the eyes of Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) supporters, Asparouhov has the image of the brave spy who served his country well and with loyalty. Opponents of the BSP see in Asparouhov an apparatchik who worked for the secret services of communist Bulgaria, thus supporting the communist regime and all the atrocities done in its name. What these people also see are the pending cases against Asparouhov for destroying important archive documents in 1993, including the file containing information about a particular secret agent of communist Bulgaria. Nothing was proven but the suspicious remained. For all these reasons, Asparouhov’s nomination by the BSP as their candidate for Sofia mayor was even more of a surprise than usual.
Such a clear party candidacy would have good chances of victory in places like, for example, Yambol where the BSP traditionally enjoys strong support, but in Sofia, where the party has never done well, Asparouhov’s nomination was seen by many political scientists as destined to fail. The BSP reasoning for choosing Asparouhov was that he as a general could stand and fight current Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov who is also a general. After all, it takes a general to beat a general, BSP Sofia unit head Roumen Ovcharov once said. Some fans of conspiracy theories saw in Asparouhov’s candidacy BSP’s way to throw some dust in the eyes of its supporters, hiding its true reluctance to win the elections in Sofia. After all, some say, the BSP has the prime minister and the president, having the Sofia mayor as well could make the party vulnerable, on the basis of the principle of peril of incumbency. Others saw in Asparouhov a wonderful way for the BSP to attack Borissov without defeating him while weakening his reputation as the sole fighter against the BSP-led government. Asparouhov’s behaviour supported that conclusion. From the start of the election campaign, much like Zaimov, Asparouhov concentrated entirely on Borissov and his actions. For the first time in 17 years, the right-wing and the left-wing candidates were not fighting each other but in a way had a joint coalition against a third candidate, each pursuing their own purposes.
With the enemy in sight, Asparouhov attacked Borissov’s weakest spot: his past as a security guard and owner of a security company in the early 1990s. In Bulgaria the words “security company” has a controversial connotation since such outfits were used for extortion rackets by “mutri”, Bulgarian slang for thick-necked mafia heavies. On October 8, Asparouhov referred to Borissov as a “mutra”. This was more than Borissov could take and the response was immediate. Borissov responded that he could prove that Asparouhov had personally applied for membership of Borissov’s party, the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (abbreviated as GERB in Bulgarian). Neither Borissov or Asparouhov bothered to prove their words. It brought back memories of the days when politicians threw accusations at each other without offering any proof. For the well presented and polished Zaimov, this worked quite well as he remained the only candidate clear of any accusations.
Despite his age of 62, Asparouhov also got in step with global technology, launching a website under his name in an attempt to be close to supporters. Unfortunately for him this was the only “innovative” thing he did in terms of attracting more publicity. His meeting with people in Sofia’s neighbourhoods attracted only people from the BSP, unlike Zaimov’s aggressive and more direct style. The advertising spots seen by television viewers every night show that most of those who turn out are pensioners, addressing Asparouhov with requests more suited to a candidate for prime minister than mayor. Indeed the campaign led by the BSP once again goes to show the interest the party has in the Sofia elections. So far, there have been no big rallies, concerts or public discussions. Asparouhov was left to lead the battle for Sofia on his own, even though a general lacking an army is unlikely to win a victory.
Despite their political and background differences, Zaimov and Asparouhov share a major failure. Both have spent much energy on attacking Borissov, leaving everyday problems of Sofians behind. The battle for Sofia mayor turned into a political one, which might give just enough reasons for people to stay at home on the elections day.
The city is barely functioning because of the heavy traffic and neither of the candidates has revealed a detailed view on how the issue will be handled. All that Sofians have been told is what has not been done so far, as opposed to what will be done from now on.
This could mean that hard-core supporters of the parties will be the driving force on election day. The decisive vote, however, will come from the people not interested in political games. Who would be their candidate will be seen on October 28. In 2005 this man was Boiko Borissov.
