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BULGARIA: Protests Rise Above Parties, and Against Them

Claudia Ciobanu

BUCHAREST, Jan 26 2009 (IPS) - Protests have been taking place in Bulgarian capital Sofia almost every day since Jan. 14. Bringing together students and parents, farmers and environmentalists, the actions are directed against a political class which, in the words of the organisers, has “robbed” Bulgarians.

Even though participation has been at most 2,000-3,000, many take these protests as a sign that some sectors of Bulgarian society are becoming increasingly politically aware and active, leaving behind a period of post-communist citizen apathy.

Last year saw numerous albeit small protests called by students demanding better conditions, greens fighting against large-scale tourism development in protected areas, and farmers protesting the cutting of funds from the European Union on account of high-level corruption. At the end of December, leaders of the student protests were already announcing a bigger action for Jan. 14, when parliamentary sessions were scheduled to resume after the winter holidays.

Jan. 14 is an important day for Bulgarians, marking the beginning of month-long protests in 1997 that eventually brought down the Socialist government. Bulgaria experienced a financial collapse that year, which most people blamed on the irresponsible actions of the government. At the time, the centre-right opposition played a central role in the street actions, which were framed as a battle of “anti-communists” versus “communists”, “blues” versus “reds”.

This year’s protests preserved some of the symbolism of 1997. Some people attended a metaphoric “funeral of democracy” Sunday last week, wearing dark colours and placing flowers in front of the parliament. A similar ‘funeral’ had been staged for the Socialists in 1997, echoing yet another symbolic funeral during anti-communist street actions in 1990, when “communist success” was buried.

But in spite of the repetition, the 2009 protests are very different. Crucially, the centre-right opposition has not been included in the actions; it is in fact considered a target of protests, together with the Socialist government. This time, protesters are careful to emphasise that they have no partisan allegiance.

At a protest on Wednesday last week, more than 1,200 people turned their backs towards the parliament, to illustrate their rejection of the entire political class.

The 2009 protests seem to be less about replacing one government with another one. “The reason for these protests is the deep discontent of different social groups with the government and the pseudo-democratic political system in Bulgaria, even though this was not very well articulated, at least at the very beginning of the protests,” political scientist Dragomir Stoyanov in Sofia told IPS. “They want a change in the way democracy is functioning in Bulgaria and a change within the elite.”

Many have been quick to read the protests as a sign of crisis in Bulgaria.

Bulgaria media focused extensively on violence Jan. 14 when a core of extremists attacked the police, who then responded excessively, arresting over 150 people and injuring more than a dozen.

The main organisers of the protests were keen to distance themselves from the violence, and footage circulating on the Internet shows organisers trying to keep the violent rioters away from the police lines. Bulgarian media later reported that the attackers had been paid to cause trouble. Focus news agency quoted independent MP Maria Kapon as saying, “I’m sorry to say that the gathering was discredited by obviously commissioned vandalism by people who were sent to do just that – provoke the police.”

In another example of distorted coverage of the events in Sofia, an article in the Jan. 18 edition of British newspaper The Guardian predicts a “spring of discontent” in Eastern Europe, with riots erupting everywhere in reaction to the effects of the global economic crisis and inefficient governments. But Bulgarian observers insist the protests in Bulgaria were not caused by the effects of the economic crisis, but have been related to specific, long-lasting problems in national politics.

Writing in Bulgarian daily Novinite, Ivan Dikov argues against a negativist take on the protests. According to Dikov, this year’s street actions are not a sign of “deep political destabilisation, social strife and even racial tension as a result of the financial crisis,” as The Guardian claims. Rather, they are “a troubled but still significant act of civic activism in a country with little civil society tradition, if any.”

Speaking to IPS after last week’s protests, political scientist Robert Phillips from the American University in Bulgaria said that the 2009 actions can be seen as a sign of “institutionalisation of protest”, even though the protesters still have much to learn about how to structure their message and coordinate their actions. He added that the mature way in which the environmentalists have been organising their own actions over the past years could serve as an example of collective grassroots action for all the other protesting groups.

Political scientist Ivan Krastev from the Centre for Liberal Strategies in Sofia also agrees that the street actions taking place this January are a new stage for citizen activism. Krastev told IPS that the Internet has played a crucial role in the organisation of this year’s protests and that “the wave of digital protests accompanying the marches in front of the parliament can play a key role for the politicisation of the generation of young people born just before or after 1989 who until now were demonstratively not interested in politics.”

According to Dragomir Stoyanov, the protests in Sofia “showed that a ‘born free generation’ exists, which is not politically apathetic and is ready to defend democratic values using democratic tools.”

While these observers are optimistic about the significance of the protests for the strength of civil society in Bulgaria, they also point out that activists have a long way to go.

According to Phillips, even though a part of the population is becoming increasingly politicised, very many are still passive. In addition, “protest in isolation will accomplish little. People need to be more active at the ballot box, to demand transparency from elected officials, to stop supporting corruption by participating in it.”