Apparently it takes $150 million for a government to break its election promises.

That's the amount Bulgaria will receive as a result of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund - something the country's politicians obviously consider quite important. So much so, they have decided to not fulfill, or delay, one of the cornerstone election promises that they made leading up to June's parliamentary elections.

In the election campaign, the National Movement Simeon II (NMSII) unveiled what its representatives called a "radical" tax reform policy. After recent negotiations with the IMF, that policy has become much less radical. The biggest part of it was a plan to introduce a zero taxation rate on reinvested corporate profits. This part of the plan has now been delayed until at least 2003.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg announced that there would be an agreement with the IMF by the end of the year. This has come as a result of concessions on the part of Bulgaria, including breaking election pledges.

For a government which solidified widespread public support as a result of its seemingly fantastic (or idealistic) promises, its economic plan is now being reduced to one that is not much more radical than that of its predecessors, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).

Perhaps this is the first major sign that is indicative of a group of inexperienced politicians. While the UDF platform may not have had as much flash or excitement associated with it, their ideas now look to have had a much more pragmatic approach to them. Chances are they knew what the IMF wanted.

The past few weeks have shown that the NMSII did not know, or maybe the new breed thought those folks in Washington with all that money would just be pushovers and support the initiatives of Bulgaria's new leadership.

But of course, as it goes in politics, one can never put blame on those poor guys running the country, it must be someone else's fault. In this case, the blame has been put squarely on the head of the IMF for not giving enough in negotiations.

While this could be a valid argument in some circumstances, it isn't here. When the NMSII was developing its campaign promises, there was definitely not enough attention paid to the IMF. Increased consultations might have affirmed that it was unlikely to go along with the "radical" promises of the NMSII.

If that had happened, then the party could have said in their campaign whether they wanted to sacrifice some reforms for an agreement or if they would instead try to govern without the help of the world lending body.

There were some statements made during the campaign and IMF negotiations that a possible alternative was to float a Eurobond issue instead of receiving IMF money. Chances are, this is an idea that was, for a while, seriously considered as an option.

But then common sense kicked in. The country's credit rating, international business opinion, and debt servicing costs would all be among the casualties of an unrealized agreement with the IMF.

If only some of this had been thought about in the lengthy two weeks it took for the NMSII to formulate their election platform, the country's electorate would not be starting to become disillusioned with its government again.