The first working day of 2009 saw a flood of prognoses about how the year will develop in terms of the upcoming two elections scheduled to be held in Bulgaria this summer: the general election for Bulgaria's Parliament and the elections for members of the European Parliament.

This will not be the first time the country will have two elections in one year, after 2007 when Bulgarians voted for mayors and MEPs following Bulgaria's accession to the European Union on January 1 2007.  Unlike in 2005, when the current Government of Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev was elected, this time the new government will have to deal with the losses caused by the freezing of almost a billion leva of EU funds to Bulgaria. In 2005 the agenda was simple; that the country had to become an EU member and the reward for Bulgarians' efforts was going to be the millions of euro in EU funds. 

The lack of administrative capacity of Bulgarian administration, often cited by the EC, and the numerous cases of alleged and sometimes unquestionable cases of corruption of state officials in charge of handling EU funds has led to the EC halting EU funds to Bulgaria.

Even though the restrictive fiscal policy of the only expert minister in the Cabinet, Finance Minister Plamen Oresharski, has accumulated for Bulgaria a budget surplus that still holds the country on a safe path, this is not enough to compensate the private sector that is the main beneficiary of EU funds. 

The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) dominated Government has already started presenting plans after plans aimed at limiting the impact on the country's labour market but by the time election day comes, the situation is expected to become a flashpoint of the election campaign.

Another key aspect of the election campaign could be the complete dependence that Bulgaria has on Russian natural gas. Denial of supply on January 6 brought an energy crisis.

The natural gas crisis has already brought to the fore the issue of re-launching units 3 and 4 of Kozloduy nuclear power plant, which Bulgaria was forced to shut down when joining the EU.

This issue has been exploited time and again, mostly by nationalist parties and President Georgi Purvanov, inevitably meeting resistance from the EC. 

As a former leader of the BSP, Purvanov has always been closely associated with the party positions and it would not be a surprise if the BSP supports this line. Especially since in the short-term it might appear to be an easy way out of Russia's natural gas grip, rather than building pipelines that could take years to complete.  

The right-wing opposition will have little credibility on the issue, simply because it was their government in the late 1990s that agreed to Kozloduy's units being shut down in order for Bulgaria to receive a date for becoming an EU member. 

Participants

The players lined up to compete in the 2009 elections are similar to those in 2005, with one big exception: the party of Sofia mayor Boiko Borissov, the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (abbreviated as GERB in Bulgarian) formed in 2006.

Never in Bulgaria's history has a party that currently has just one MP had such wide public support based entirely on the actions of its leader and his regular confrontations with the Government. 

This is reflected in all statements by pollsters and analysts quoted by the Bulgarian media on January 5. All of them found that GERB would be among the parties winning the most seats. The other thing on which they agreed was that no single party would be able to win a majority in Parliament and the next government, like the current one, would be a result of a coalition agreement. This means a repeat of the 2005 situation, when it took more than a month of talks before the current three ruling parties, the BSP, the National Movement for Stability and Progress (NMSP) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) put aside their differences.

Ever since GERB was formed in 2005, it has been the most fearsome opponent to the BSP and much of the talk is about the respective shares of votes the two parties will get in this year's elections.  

According to analyst Andrei Raichev, quoted by Bulgarian-language Trud daily, the BSP will come first and GERB second.  The reason, according to Raichev, was that the two traditional right wing parties, the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) and the Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria (DSB), will take 10 per cent of the votes and so take away some of the support for GERB. Seven parties were going to make it into the next Parliament, he said: the BSP, GERB, the MRF, the UDF, the DSB, the NMSP, ultra-nationalist Ataka and the Napred coalition. The latter was formed just before Christmas, from parties supported firmly by energy tycoon Hristo Kovachki. The model of business parties relying on nationalistic sentiment was already successfully tested at the last local elections and now will be checked on a national level.    

24 Chassa daily quoted Afis polling agency figures as indicating a GERB win at the elections with the BSP coming second at a three to four per cent distance. Alfa Research also predicted a GERB lead but said that only about 29 per cent of those polled said that they intended voting in the European Parliament elections. However, 60 per cent of those polled said that they intended voting in the elections for Bulgaria's Parliament.