15
R i s e , F a l l a nd D i s i n t e g r at i on…
hands of the Socialists. Although he was elected on the UDF ticket in January 1992, at the
end of that year relations between him and the coalition broke down because of his harsh
critique of the UDF government of Philip Dimitrov. By the end of 1993, the presidency
and the UDF turned into two separate and even competing centers of influence.
At the end of 1995 (i.e. one year before the end of his five-year mandate), President Zhe-
lev announced that he would run for another five-year term. In response, the coalition
People’s Union (PU), which had split from the UDF, declared its support for his candidacy,
whereas the UDF declared its intention to nominate its own candidate. The worst scenario
for the opposition thus materialized, culminating in the evil of running two democratic
candidates against the Socialist’s one. And this took place at the moment when the BSP
seemed ready and eager to concentrate all available power in its hands.
All attempts at mediation within the democratic sector failed. President Zhelev refused to
withdraw from the race, and the UDF refused to accept him as its candidate for a second
term. In this deadlock, an agreement for a vote transfer between the first and the second
round of voting, according to which candidates of the right would compete in the first
round, while in the second the supporters of the defeated one would support the victor,
seemed like a reasonable solution. It was clear that no one in a three-candidate race would
be able to win in the first round. There were three arguments against this solution. First,
the experience from the 1995 local elections clearly indicated that a vote transfer would
not exceed 65%. Second, it was not difficult to foresee that an election campaign with two
democratic candidates could lead to mutual attacks and bitter accusations, resulting in
hostility and distrust between the opposition parties. Third, there was tremendous public
pressure in favor of one democratic candidate. Polls clearly indicated that should the dem-
ocratic community field two candidates, a Socialist would be Bulgaria’s next president,
leaving the country entirely in the hands of the ex-Communists.
II. The Turning Point: The Presidential
Primary Elections In June 1996
A mechanism had to be found for going into the elections with a single candidate sup-
ported by all the opposition parties. Primary elections emerged as the only solution, and
they became possible because the political leaders understood that the presidential elec-
tions would be crucial to the hope of saving the reforms and to the revival of the country.
However, fears of a failed primary abounded, even by those who sincerely believed it was
the only option. These fears reflected the nature of Bulgaria’s young democracy. There was
a cultural argument against the primaries which claimed that such American mechanisms
can work only in a political environment such as that of the United States. This attitude
was nourished by the rumors that the idea originally came from the Sofia branch of the
International Republican Institute. The involvement of an American organization based in
Washington strengthened the arguments that the whole idea was an irresponsible import
of a peculiar foreign political mechanism that was inadequate and dangerous for Bulgaria.
There were talks about a conspiracy against the UDF and democracy in general. Not only
did Bulgarian journalists and politicians insist that this “crazy” concept should be aban-
doned, EU-member-country embassies in Sofia (a notable exception being the Spanish
