I am going to give you a balloon; please vote for me.

Balloons loom large in election campaign events in Bulgaria. The weekend before Bulgaria was to choose 18 people to become its members of the European Parliament (EP), the socialist platform were handing out white balloons emblazoned with a red rose and the slogan “Europe for you” while the right-wing minority opposition Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria elsewhere were handing out blue ones. On the Sunday, the centre-right Union of Democratic Forces were offering balloons in its shade of blue, while the National Movement Simeon II handed over yellow balloons, inscribed with its logo and “the European face of Bulgaria”.

Considering this balloon-centred campaigning, I do not find it entirely coincidental that to describe someone in Bulgarian as “edin balon” (a balloon) is to say that he is a person of no substance. If the opinion polls are correct, it may be extrapolated that about two-thirds of those who were in Bulgaria’s public parks this past weekend and who accepted balloons of whatever political stripe and gave them to their children, will be in the same parks on voting day, without any detour to a polling station.

The balloons, rallies, musicians’ concerts, street parades and photo opportunities at nationally symbolic sites that rounded off various parties’ campaigns were only the endgame in EP election campaigns that began a long time ago.

The campaigns really began when the national conversation and national news bulletins were dominated by talk of Kozloduy nuclear power station, and rakiya, Bulgaria’s traditional brandy. These issues substantially pre-date the official election campaigning period.

The first issue has been around for a long time, since Bulgaria agreed, under the Union of Democratic Forces government that was in office until autumn 2001, to shut down two units of Kozloduy as part of the conditions required for the country to be admitted to the European Union. The agreement, which thinned Bulgaria’s energy production capacity and its potential for revenue-earning power exports, has served as easy grounds for populist calls for Bulgaria to try to get the decision changed or to renege unilaterally on the agreement. Much as it amounted to tilting at windmills, such calls continued even as Bulgaria celebrated its EU accession at the beginning of this year. It is not too cynical to suggest that those within this country making such calls were doing so mindful of the European elections.

An issue both populist and popular was that of the excises imposed on home-made rakiya. Various quarters have promised to campaign at European level against the excise, and various parties have tried to keep the issue on the agenda during the official MEP election campaign.

If ever there was a hope that rival campaigns would have to contest issues directly related to Bulgaria’s place in the EU and the issues that should be paramount for Bulgaria’s EP delegation, other issues arose time and again to obscure any such hope.

A great deal of debating time, both formally within Parliament and informally in the media, was devoted to the decision to introduce the principle of residence-based voting in Bulgaria’s elections for the EP. It was widely, and probably correctly, interpreted as a move by other parties to hack away a substantial portion of the voter base of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party traditionally supported by Bulgarians of Turkish ethnicity. Previous elections in recent years have seen much resentment among other parties about buses that cross the border from Turkey bringing MRF voters, and voting within Turkish borders for MRF candidates. After the law was approved, its implementation saw electoral officials cutting a swathe through voters’ rolls in areas that traditionally support the MRF.

While this decision may prove to reduce the electoral potential of the MRF, it should be noted that the MRF now has an essential, if definitely unsolicited function, in Bulgaria politics: as the bete noire of ultra-nationalist party Ataka. Images of the MRF leadership have turned up in two different places in this campaign: on its own posters, and, in somewhat less flattering light, on those of Ataka. The MRF is the hate-figure that all parties like Ataka need. That the MRF was at pains to point out that half of those on its MEP candidates’ list are “Christians” (meaning, are not Muslims) is unlikely to have changed anyone’s mind about the party, either for or against.

An issue that seems to have had scant long-term resonance is that some MEP candidates, a total of six from different parties, had dossiers at the former communist-era state security services. That this had little impact is no surprise. There are a number of people in public life, in politics and in the media, widely perceived as having been linked to the communist political police. No careers have been harmed in the making of these allegations.

An issue that captured public imagination to a much larger degree was that of whether Bulgaria should elect as MEPs its medics trapped for years in what is purported to be a court process in Libya. The original idea was to elect the medics, in custody in Libya pending various court processes including an appeal against the death sentences pronounced for supposedly deliberately infecting hundreds of Libyan children with HIV, to the EP as a means of putting pressure on Libya’s Muammar Gaddaffi. The idea did not find favour with Bulgaria’s mainstream political parties, but endured with Georgi Markov’s Law, Order and Justice party, which put out television advertising and posters pronouncing itself “For the medics and Against the political mafia”. (A somewhat ham-handed campaign message, if one considers the lack of likelihood that any other party would campaign with the opposite message.) Perhaps it may be my cynical self, but it was difficult to see the point of nominating the medics as a matter of shaming Gaddaffi; you cannot shame someone who has no conscience. It could, however, have a spin-off in sentiment-based voting, especially for a party that struggled to register even the faintest blip in the 2006 presidential elections.

In the final fortnight before the campaign, much space in the media was taken up by what may fairly be called the Ovcharov-Alexandrov Affair. To put this as succinctly as possible, this involved several mutual accusations and much mutual recrimination among various senior public office-bearers and state institutions, and led to Economy and Energy Minister Roumen Ovcharov and National Investigative Service head Angel Alexandrov being sent on leave, while two deputy ministers were fired, and prosecutors were set to work.

Ovcharov has headed the Sofia outfit of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (trading in this election as the Platform of European Socialists) for the past decade, and is Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev’s deputy in the leadership of the BSP. Expectations, or at least wishful thinking in some quarters, were that the involvement of Ovcharov’s name in the controversy would damage the socialists. Pending the final results, however, it may be that the controversy might serve only to lower voter turnout and, though this is less quantifiable, confirm or worsen public cynicism about Bulgaria’s politicians. While the Ovcharov-Alexandrov Affair simmered, bubbling under was another, involving Emel Etem, Deputy Prime Minister and a deputy leader of the MRF, and allegations involving the contingency reserve fund.

Yet, for all these episodes, the various campaigns seemed to trundle along with no clear issues emerging about policy options offered by Bulgaria’s would-be MEPs. It may be, as has been said elsewhere, that the parties themselves were devoting less than the maximum energy and resources to the MEP elections because these are being held in reserve for the municipal elections scheduled for autumn this year.

While public opinion polls should be treated with a modicum of reserve, it is worthwhile noting that as the weeks went by, there was less-than-significant change in support for the various parties, and no change in the ranking of those viewed as most likely to succeed.

A survey done by Afis agency between May 3 and 6 and published on May 7 gave the BSP 12 per cent, Boiko Borissov’s GERB 8.1 per cent, the MRF 4.9 per cent and Ataka 3.2 per cent.

An Alpha Research poll published on May 9 gave the BSP 15.5 per cent, GERB 13.2, the MRF 6.7, Ataka 5.7, the NMSII 4.9, the UDF 3.2 and the DSB 2.3 per cent. The Alpha polls indicated some changes, for example that the BSP was steadily shedding support (it had 17 per cent in April and 20.1 per cent in March), support for GERB had fallen slightly, Ataka had gained slightly, and other gainers were the NMSII, UDF and DSB.

May 11 saw the MBMD agency saying, on the basis of a poll done between April 27 and May 2, that the BSP and GERB were even, followed by the MRF, Ataka, and with the NMSII having enough support for one seat.

On May 12, the National Public Opinion Centre, on the basis of a poll done between April 25 and May 2, said that the BSP would get 14.6 per cent, GERB 10.5, the MRF eight per cent, Ataka 6.5, the NMSII 5.9, the UDF 5.5 and the DSB 2.6. Notably, this poll found that more than half of those intending to vote were making their choice on the basis of party affiliation.

A figure that, if true, would tend to make campaigns, personalities, the qualities of candidates, the controversies of the day, and certainly any hope of debate on issues of substance, somewhat irrelevant.

But that does help to reinforce the image of the balloon as the enduring symbol of Bulgaria’s 2007 EP election campaigns.

CLIVE LEVIEV-SAWYER and PETAR KOSTADINOV revisit Bulgaria’s 2007 European Parliament election campaign trail