On Tuesday we looked at Moldova and Georgia; today, the other three elections this week where Russia’s presence looms large.
Bulgaria has been in an extended political crisis since 2021. On Sunday it goes to the polls in another attempt to resolve things, which the previous six – yes, six – elections (April 2021, July 2021, November 2021, October 2022, April 2023 and June 2024) have all failed to do. This post from last year contains a handy summary with the relevant links, while this one updates the story to last June.
After the June election, the failure of the parties to agree on a government continued as before. President Rumen Radev invited successively the leaders of the two largest parties, GERB (centre-right establishment, anti-Russian) and PP-DB (centrist, reformist, also anti-Russian), and also the smaller ITN (right-wing populist reformist), to form a government, but all of them failed. Even appointing a caretaker to lead the government until the next election proved difficult, with the president eventually sticking with the incumbent, auditor-general Dimitar Glavchev.
Radev’s comments, as reported by the Bulgarian News Agency, are hard to improve on:
Radev [said] that the spiral of elections with no results is irritating the public and alienating people from the democratic process, as it paralyzes numerous institutions. He advised political parties to tackle the political crisis by trying to form a governing coalition before the elections and not after them.
Radev added: “I appeal for meaningful political debate and fair play in the weeks ahead. Otherwise, we are doomed to repeat procedures that more and more people see as pointless.”
Polling again shows very little change from last time. GERB has a solid lead, polling in the mid-20s, and three parties are jostling for second place in the mid-teens: PP-DB, the liberal but corrupt DPS (which has recently split), and the far-right Revival. The Socialists (establishment pro-Russian) and ITN are the only others that look like crossing the 4% threshold, and without much to spare.
Lithuania, a former Soviet republic with a much happier recent history, went to the polls on 13 October for the first round of its parliamentary election. The previous election, four years ago, yielded a centre-to-centre-right government of three parties: Homeland (centre-right), the Freedom Party (left-liberal) and the Liberal Movement (right-liberal). Homeland’s Ingrida Šimonytė became prime minister.
She is still there, despite an unsuccessful run for president last May. The three governing parties held 74 of the 141 seats in parliament in total; their main opponent was the Farmers & Greens Union, which held 32. Two rival centre-left parties had 23 seats between them, and the remaining twelve were spread among four small parties and some independents.
The first round chose MPs for the 70 proportional seats. The governing parties all lost ground (the Freedom Party fell below the 5% threshold), but so did the Farmers & Greens, so the new parliament is on the way to being very fragmented. The centre-left Social Democrats topped the poll with 19.7%, just ahead of Homeland on 18.4%. Two new parties came next – the populist or far-right Dawn of Nemunas with 15.3% and the moderately Green Union of Democrats with 9.4% – followed by the right-liberals on 7.9% and the Farmers & Greens on 7.2%.
This Sunday voters will decide the runoffs in the 71 constituency seats, except for a handful where there was a first-round winner. If the first-round leaders are all successful (which they won’t be, but most of them will), the totals will come out at Homeland 43, Social Democrats 40, Dawn of Nemunas 18, Union of Democrats and Farmers & Greens each 11, Liberal Movement ten and eight others.
The Social Democrats, Union of Democrats and Farmers & Greens have promised to try to form a coalition government, but getting to a majority won’t be easy. Assuming that neither side will co-operate with Dawn of Nemunas (the only party that is even mildly pro-Russian), it may be that Homeland and the Social Democrats will need to come to some understanding.
Finally to Uzbekistan, which has never been a democracy but has made some steps in that direction in recent years, since the death of long-time ruler Islam Karimov in 2016. As I remarked in 2021, it has in that time “moved from being an outright dictatorship to what one might call a merely authoritarian state.”
At the last legislative election, in 2020-21, five parties won seats, but all of them are supporters of the regime of president Shavkat Mirziyoyev. Some indications of a thaw were observed, but no actual opposition parties were permitted to stand, and it has still not proved possible for any to be legally registered, although there is clearly some degree of official tolerance for their activity.
There has, however, been a further reform of the electoral system, with half the seats now to be elected by proportional representation and the other half in single-member districts (the same system as Lithuania). The five legal parties appear to be actively competing for support within the general framework of loyalty to Mirziyoyev, so there is at least some opportunity for different perspectives to be aired.
Uzbekistan is not a Russian dependency; it flaunts its neutrality and has never joined Russia’s Collective Security Treaty Organisation. While relations with Russia are clearly important (it has consistently abstained on the UN votes on Ukraine) it has also enjoyed good relations with the United States. But like Georgia, it shows that Russian influence is not the only thing making for repression: home-grown authoritarians are as common as ever.
The freedom of choice that Lithuania, Moldova and even Georgia have achieved since the demise of their imperial overlord remains just a dream in central Asia.
The World is Not Enough 