THE nearly 300 000 Bulgarians who voted for the Ataka Coalition – some, reportedly, by drawing a swastika in the box on the ballot paper – ensured that the ultra-nationalist group would steal the post-election limelight.
In the hours and days after the first exit polls were broadcast on June 25, Ataka became the national talking point. That the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) was set to return as the majority party for the first time since the economic disaster of 1996-1997, which occurred under a BSP government, seemed less compelling. 
Ataka, which conducted a subterranean campaign on the internet and cable television, hopped from one controversy to the next with each passing day after the election. 
The group’s turbulent news conference on election night ended with a walkout by the group after a journalist, indicating he was frustrated by leader Volen Siderov’s “incoherent” answers, asked when it was that Siderov had withdrawn from psychiatric treatment.
Ataka announced it would not appear on the national private television channel bTV after one of the station’s journalists, Nikolai Barekov, described Siderov as a racist after seeing footage of the leader attacking the Roma, Turks, Jews and gay people at a rally. Ataka would only give interviews to the channel if bTV formally apologised, the coalition said.
When it emerged the coalition lacked registration to obtain seats in Parliament, Ataka had to go to court. The coalition partners include National Movement for Homeland Rescue, the Bulgarian National-Patriotic Party, Attack political party, the Zora political circle, the Patriotic Forces and Military Reserves Union, but apparently none has the registration required.
If registration is refused, Ataka may, as the National Movement Simeon II did in 2001, have to take up seats in the name of another registered party, under a flag of convenience.
There was further uproar when the forum on the Ataka web site hosted, for three days, a list of the names of 1500 people, which it called influential Jews in Bulgaria.
The list, prefaced by virulently anti-Semitic comments, included prominent politicians, among them BSP leader Sergei Stanishev, as well as civic and cultural leaders and journalists. The item was deleted after a news agency reported its existence.
Asked to comment on the anti-Semitic item, Ataka deputy leader Anton Sirakov told reporters: “We may think such things, but we do not make them public in this way”.
Siderov told the election night news conference that Bulgarians who voted for Ataka were not fascists, saying “they saw in us a defender of their interests” and that it had won confidence with its “patriotic positions”.
Apart from prejudices about ethnic groups, these positions include opposition to land sales involving foreigners, calls for Bulgaria to quit NATO and a call for Bulgaria to withdraw its troops from Iraq and to disallow US bases in Bulgaria. 
In an interview on Bulgarian National Television’s morning show on June 28, Siderov described those opposing a Bulgarian troop pullout from Iraq as “traitors”. He said Ataka would table a motion in Parliament calling for a withdrawal.
“It is against Bulgarian interests to provide [bases] without even a penny of compensation,” he said. “I think there would be four or five bases that are going to turn us into a target of all possible enemies of the US. And the number of these is growing all the time.”
It was not only in the media that Ataka’s name was mentioned. In one incident soon after results was announced, a group of Roma in Bourgas escaped assault after a group of youths pursued them, shouting, “Ataka, Ataka”.