Word has it that the viewership ratings of the public broadcaster’s nightly municipal elections reports – including sponsored reports and adverts – are pretty high.

I can understand why, and I do not believe that it is because the trend of recent years of steadily declining interest in politics has been reversed. The attraction is that so often, the television spots are funny, usually in a rather bizarre sort of way.

There is the would-be mayor in a place near Veliko Turnovo who releases carp into a river which has none, to prove his green credentials. In Varna and Bourgas, wannabe councillors are out and about cleaning up public gardens. (Hands up all those who believe that they will repeat this should they be elected. No one? As I thought.) The candidate of ultra-nationalists Ataka, Slavi Binev, of whom more later, has doled out chicken soup to the elderly, gone to a zoo – apparently also to prove his love for Mother Earth – and gone canvassing in a Roma area. His sponsored report depictes this latter event as running smoothly. Separate reports say that he was run out of the place, a claim somewhat more credible given that Ataka canvassing in a Roma area is a bit like Hitler having tried to woo the Jewish vote.

Outside the world of the small screen, someone has put up a poster depicting Binev wearing a fez outside the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, with large red letters proclaiming that it is not a photo montage. Dirty tricks indeed. Could not have happened to a nicer person.

A presumably substantial amount of money paid to ensure that Binev is the first event every night on television in the municipal election “paid publication” slot might give the uninformed the impression that he is a real player. Every evening we are treated to Binev’s doings of the day. It is in sharp contrast to the incumbent mayor, Boiko Borissov, of whom we actually see less on television than usual. Perhaps his advisers have decided to portray him as above such demeaning things as canvassing, on the principle of “less is more”.

The campaign for Martin Zaimov, candidate jointly of the centre-right Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and right-wing Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria, is somewhat like the man himself, intelligent and sophisticated and therefore, unfortunately, a bit boring and not especially memorable. The UDF’s specific campaign has a theme of a blue Europe. Quite nice imagery, but it could also be advertising the EU, or MEP candidates.

The other major candidate, the Bulgarian Socialist Party’s Brigo Asparouhov, the former communist securocrat, appears mainly as a talking head, literally, one of a series of BSP candidates who zooms out of a poster to give a potted message in a few seconds. Their headshots are interspersed with red roses. The roses look a touch fake and awkward. So do the candidates. Specific paid reports for Asparouhov show him out in the streets, doing meet-and-greet. Such spontaneity does not seem to come naturally to the general. His determined approach to each target looks more as if he is about to take them into secret police custody, rather than solicit their vote.

Konstantin “Titi” Papazov, the sports star turned candidate for the Democratic Party, has a campaign assuring us that he has “100 Questions”. That says a lot about the municipal elections campaign overall. Most of us would prefer someone who had 100 answers, or perhaps just two or three. All right, just one, if you please?

The Law, Order and Justice party has bought slots to follow those of Binev every night. Every time I see a rant by their general secretary, Yani Yanev, I remember reports of an incident a few years ago when he was still a member of the UDF, and allegedly detonated a teargas canister at a party meeting in a hall in Plovdiv. That was taking internal party dissent quite far.

The campaign by the Middle European Class party (no, I do not know why they put the words in that order, because their idea would seem to dictate that the first and second should be transposed) is certainly bizarre. The opening attraction at all their events is a folklore performance. Yet their imagery is all about Western European affluence, with each advert closing with a CGI shot of a flashy red sports car zooming across the water offshore from a Manhattan-style steel-and-glass skyscraper skyline. Scary.

Also way out front in the bizarre stakes is the party LIDER (“Leader”) predicated, yes you guessed correctly, about what natural leaders they all are. How many times have I heard Bulgarians complain that the reason that politics here is so fractured is because everyone wants to be a leader?

The number of fly-by-night parties of all shapes and sizes – the latter usually rather small, with the claque in attendance at events usually seeming to consist of candidates’ immediate families – might give credence to the cynical theory that many candidates and the forces behind them actually want to get their hands, somehow, on EU funds.

Let us not forget that the electorate this time around also includes EU citizens permanently resident in Bulgaria. As a nod to this, the public information campaign on the mechanics of voting is broadcast with subtitles in English (and why no other EU language, pray tell?). The English subtitles were littered with mistakes, of which my favourite is the injunction not to mark the ballot so as to give away your identity. Well, “identity” is the word used in the Bulgarian voice-over. In English, the subtitles say that should you should not do anything to disclose your personality.

A lot of candidates seemed to be operating on this very principle.