As 2010 dawned with Boiko Borissov’s party holding majorities in Bulgaria’s European Parliament delegation, national Cabinet and occupying the mayor’s seat in Sofia, the consolidation of power reduced the controversies around the three 2009 elections to footnotes in the country’s political history.

It was a spectacular arc for Borissov’s party, the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (known by its Bulgarian abbreviation, GERB). The June 7 European Parliament elections saw it take 24.36 per cent, five out of the 17 seats accorded to Bulgaria by the Treaty of Nice – the coming into effect of the Lisbon
Treaty should give the country one more, doubling the Blue Coalition’s seats to two.

The national parliamentary elections on July 5 saw about 1.6 million voters back GERB, giving the party 40 seats in the 116-seat National Assembly, through a mixed constituency and proportional representation system.

Yordanka Fandukova became the first woman mayor of Sofia on a GERB ticket, getting more than 66 per cent of votes on November 15 to succeed to the office that Borissov relinquished to become Prime Minister.

Allegations of vote-buying during the European Parliament and national parliamentary elections were flung around although, in inverse proportion to its popularity, Borissov’s GERB was on the receiving end of very few smears. Leading the field for alleged vote-buying and "election tourism" – the bussing-in of voters – was Ahmed Dogan’s Movement for Rights and Freedoms, the party of the man who, controversially, claimed to outweigh elected institutions as the real power in Bulgaria, and whose party had served in the two previous governing coalitions.

Borissov’s Cabinet was formed and approved by Parliament at a speed rapid for Bulgaria. Elsewhere in the political spectrum, there was scant good news for anyone.

After a surprisingly good showing at the European Parliament elections, on a ticket headed by popular European Commissioner Meglena Kouneva (she relinquished her seat to serve out her EC term), Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s National Movement for Stability and Progress was eclipsed at the national parliamentary elections. Saxe-Coburg stepped down as leader, to be succeeded several months later by former labour and social policy minister Hristina Hristova.

Unlike Saxe-Coburg, Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Sergei Stanishev adamantly refused to quit the leadership of his party, which got about 18 per cent in the European Parliament elections, just less than that in the national elections and whose candidate in the Sofia elections, Georgi Kadiev, got just less than 28 per cent, in spite of – or because of – the strange spectacle of party leader and mayoral candidate publicly distancing themselves from each other.

Volen Siderov’s ultra-nationalists Ataka got two European Parliament seats and 21 in the National Assembly, and although, like other right-wing forces, Ataka declined to sign a manifesto supporting Borissov’s Government, a continuing symbiosis appeared to form between GERB and Ataka. This led, several months later, to debacle when Borissov endorsed Siderov’s proposal for a national referendum on whether Bulgarian National Television should continue its daily special news bulletins in Turkish. The backlash, at home and abroad, was so swift and considerable that Borissov had to back down.

Borissov kept prosecutors busy as document after document related to former cabinet ministers made their way to serve as evidence in actual and possible charges of malfeasance in office. Several office-bearers in state and parastatal entities were axed swiftly; in the early days of the Borissov Government it was difficult to keep pace with the thunder of falling heads. Some kept their jobs; after a morning of theatre in Parliament, central bank governor Ivan Iskrov kept his post.

A peeved Stanishev complained that Borissov was running the country as if he was campaigning for election (an ironic claim considering that Borissov’s party had such an overwhelming high in popularity polls that it hardly bothered to campaign at all; or, if you prefer, Borissov had been campaigning for high office for several years, so no one could tell the difference). While Stanishev had managed to hang on to the leadership of his party, Borissov’s response to any socialist criticism was a series of backhands, delivered with an air of studied boredom and contempt, usually on the theme of the parlous state of public finances that Stanishev’s cohorts had bequeathed to him.