The motion of no confidence in the Cabinet tabled by 50 right-wing opposition MPs on the grounds of what they described as the Government’s failure to deal adequately with the aftermath of the floods of recent months was doomed from the start to failure.
This was not only because of the numbers game, the fact that the tripartite coalition Cabinet made up of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, National Movement Simeon II, and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms has a commanding majority in Parliament.
Failure of the no-confidence motion was also predetermined by a confluence of political factors. One is that no one within the governing majority would be likely to be prepared to unseat the Cabinet set up with the specific purpose of ushering Bulgaria into the European Union on January 1 2007. To vote along with the opposition on the motion of no confidence, whatever private misgivings there may be among individual MPs affiliated to the ruling coalition, would have been a supremely pointless act of political suicide. In turn, this was not only so because of the negative implications for Bulgaria’s EU prospects, but also, in a doomsday scenario of fresh elections, because it would be far-fetched to imagine that any of the mainstream parties of the left and right would stand to gain in new parliamentary elections in 2006. Not even the parties of the MPs who proposed the motion. Even the most cursory glance at the trends in recent polls would show that the parties of the right are continuing on a path of political eclipse. Nor do the BSP and MRF have anything to gain by premature elections. Such elections, should current polls be accorded credibility, would see gains only by any political force to which Sofia mayor and former Interior Ministry chief secretary Boiko Borissov is affiliated, and possibly even by Ataka, notwithstanding the controversies surrounding the ultra-nationalist group, including the Trakia Highway assault episode.
With the outcome of the vote being a foregone conclusion - for the record, the vote was 61 in favour of the motion of no confidence, 166 against and one abstention - what was billed as a no-confidence debate was in reality closer to what, in Westminster terms, would be better described as a “snap debate” on Government handling of the floods.
Neither side emerged from this debate with their credibility much enhanced. For the Government to have scored points (given that it could not really have gained votes from those who tabled the motion) it would have had to have carefully deployed its ministers, each to offer a shining bauble of achievement in dealing with the floods. It tried, as is recorded on these pages, but did not exploit its public relations opportunity to the fullest.
Going by the perspectives offered by Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev and by MRF leader Ahmed Dogan, that Disaster Management Minister Emel Etem is not better placed to deal with her portfolio because her ministry is under-resourced, Etem emerged more as a figure of sympathy rather than of admiration.
The opposition, similarly unable to recruit votes rather than do anything more than score points, did not do particularly well either. Amid a debate on a natural disaster such as a flood, there is ample opportunity to sling mud, which after all is in plentiful supply. To have done better, the opposition might have considered offering a perspective on how better, in concrete terms, the floods might have been dealt with. Instead, we heard that the Government had not coped adequately. This lacked substance, especially given the admissions from Government quarters that it could have done better - although its spokespeople offered historical reasons as to why it could not have done better.
Some discussion was raised about the fact that the co-operation among opposition parties in the no-confidence debate was meant as a precursor to similar co-operation in the future. Using such an “opportunity” to exercise some form of co-operation is not particularly impressive or constructive. It comes across as being as silly and wasteful as making an enormous supply of dainty sandwiches and snacks to prove that, should anyone be interested, you would be able to run a catering service.
In the end, the debate on the no-confidence vote came and went, with no one especially the wiser about how better to cope with the floods, and no opinions changed about whether this Government is the most appropriate one to deal with the crisis. Perhaps all it did was, in a context other than the inadequacies of the justice and home affairs system, raise the question of whether Bulgaria is EU-ready. But that question already looms large over the landscape of Bulgaria, whether inundated by floods or not.
