The first effort of the right-wing opposition to organise a joint resistance against the Government on February 22 failed. The news of the day was that that the Government had survived a motion of no confidence. The motion was based on the grounds of alleged corruption. The other news, however, was that the long-waited unity of the right-wing opposition did not happen in reality. It became clear that a year and a half before the next general elections for Parliament, the opposition had nothing to offer its supporters in terms of strategy, a programme or most importantly vision. After three years in opposition the right-wing parties were no closer to the unity desired by their supporters.

The current reality in Bulgarian political life doesn’t allow any party to have the executive all to itself. Even the biggest and oldest party, the Bulgarian Socialist Party, has to rule in coalition. Similarly it applies for the right-wing opposition. For the purpose of the motion the right-wing parties tried to form their own coalition.

It all looked promising on February 14 when all seven right-wing parties tabled a motion of no confidence in the Government. The motion was firmly supported by the most powerful, according to surveys, right-wing party at the moment, Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov’s party Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (abbreviated as GERB in Bulgarian). The fact that GERB had one MP in Parliament was used by the opposition as an example that people in- and outside of Parliament had united against the Government.

Besides tabling the motion, the opposition leaders put on a PR event. On February 17, at a joint news conference, representatives of GERB, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF), Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation (IMRO), Bulgarian People’s Union (BPU), the Law, Order and Justice Party (LJP), New Bulgarian Democracy (BND) and the ultra-nationalist Ataka party said they were ready to rule. Unfortunately they did not say how.

The PR efforts did not stop there. All the party leaders called on their supporters to join them at a protest rally in front of Parliament’s building, scheduled for the day when the motion was going to be discussed by the MPs. Leaders promised a turnout of tens of thousands of people.

Each party had its own agenda. For GERB the protest rally was going to be the first it had organised. The venue was going to be important for the party as well as it was also the first protest rally that Borissov’s party would take part in. For the UDF and the DSB the rally was a good opportunity to present themselves as the genuine right-wing parties in Bulgaria, something that had often been questioned by GERB. For the smaller right-wing parties such as the IMPO, LJP and BPU the rally was an opportunity to show the world that there were still alive. As one of the youngest parties in Bulgaria, BND’s main priority was to find its identity.

Days before tabling the motion of no confidence, BND MPs described themselves as right-wing and dedicated their efforts to joining the club of right-wing party. As BND was formed by MPs who had all left the ruling majority, their calls for a joint right-wing group in Parliament was met little sympathy from the other right-wing parties.

Ataka’s name on the list of parties supporting the no confidence vote was no surprise since the party had supported the previous three motions against the Government. The surprise was that all the other right-wing parties treated Ataka as a potential partner in a future cabinet, although each of the parties had stated in the past that nationalism was not part of its philosophy.

The first sign that the unity was not as unified as first thought came on February 19 when deputy chairperson of DSP’s parliamentary group Ekaterina Mihailova said the opposition both in- and outside Parliament was not a unified alternative to the current Government. “We support the motion of no confidence together with the other parties in opposition because we share the feeling that this Government should go. However the fact that we will be together at the protest rally does not make us unified in every sense. We have many differences and we do not see the opposition in its current form as an alternative to the Government,” she said.

The previous three motions of no confidence were on the grounds of poor disaster management, the poor level of health reform and the poor level of education system. This time the opposition, following the European Commission’s interim report, chose corruption as the grounds of the motion. It was top level corruption that worried the opposition. Since the beginning of the year the media had been full of stories about allegations of high-level corruption. One case was that of the National Road Infrastructure Fund (NRIF). The executive director of the fund Vesselin Georgiev was forced to resign after it emerged that his brother’s company had received the majority of NRIF’s contracts, which were worth millions of leva. Armed with newspaper stories and the EC report which asked for more efforts on fighting corruption, the opposition promised that during the debate they would reveal evidence of corruption.

Fortunately for the Government, nothing like that happened. Opposition MPs simply quoted newspaper stories that were not really new to anyone. Outside, the protest crowd that was suppose to number in the tens of thousands was no more than 4500. A stage was set up in front of the entrance to the Bulgarian Science Academy on Narodno Subranie Square, next to Parliament. Posters on the stage read “United opposition for early elections”.

The Interior Ministry was the big loser on the day because it had believed that the opposition would manage to motivate people to come to Sofia as they had announced. What the 1200 armed police saw from behind the fence surrounding Parliament was, relatively, just a handful of people enjoying an outing on a sunny day.

Opposition leaders took their turns on the stage. For Borissov it was a chance to test his skills as a public speaker. However, the words of one protester, recorded by The Sofia Echo, said it all.

The protester was not satisfied with Borissov’s speech; he only went on stage to say “Thanks for coming today”.

Although the permit issued for the rally by Sofia municipality was from 2pm until 10pm, protesters started dispersing at about 4pm. By 5pm, the protest was more or less over both in and out of Parliament. The next day the Government needed a just a minute for the electronic system to show the result of the voting. They had defeated the motion, 149 against and 86 in favour.