Following a trend that first, in the Italian election of 2018, saw Right and Left anti-globalist parties form a ruling coalition, and then months ago in Slovakia saw Robert Fico’s illiberal socialists join forces with nationalists to defeat Brussels-backed liberals, anti-liberal parties in Bulgaria from across the increasingly antiquated left-right spectrum are taking similar actions.
This week, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), affiliated with the Party of European Socialists (PES) grouping, declared its formal intention to establish a comprehensive coalition with patriotic left and national-right parties, Euractiv reports.
Presently, the Bulgarian Socialist Party has 10% of the seats in the Bulgarian parliament.
Based on comments given to the press by Kornelia Ninova, who leads the Bulgarian Socialist Party, it appears that a shared opposition to Brussels’ position on the war in Ukraine and extremist gender ideology is bringing the seemingly dissimilar parties together.
On Tuesday, November 28th, Ninova told the Bulgarian television channel bTV:
We are against the flag that the Party of European Socialists (PES) has been waving in recent years to implement the Istanbul Convention, to recognize a third gender that has no relation to biological sex as a social sex. We do not approve of PES declaring sanctions against Russia for providing weapons to Ukraine.
“I am happy about (Robert) Fico’s victory in Slovakia,” the BSP chief said, explaining to the media outlet that the party’s “patriotic turn” is in line with shifts taking place at the global level.
Like Fico’s SMER party, the BSP, along with its left-nationalist allies, has been described as ‘pro-Russian’ by the liberal international press. Following the formation of his governing coalition with the Slovak National Party (SNS), Fico’s SMER party was suspended by the Party of European Socialists.
“The pendulum swings from extreme liberalism to the other extreme—fascism. We have to stop it in the middle,” Ninova continued. She added that the motto of the new patriotic, anti-globalist coalition is “protection of Bulgarian interests within the EU.”
The new left-nationalist bloc will encompass 16 parties that collaborated with the BSP in the recent local elections held at the end of October. “All the parties will make a network. We will come out with a political document, a declaration of what we unite for,” Ninova told the network.
The nascent alliance, which includes the national-right Bulgarian Orthodox Church-aligned Ataka party, headed by Volen Siderov, will face its first electoral test in the upcoming European parliamentary election in June 2024.
Currently, it appears that Bulgaria’s Revival party, which has a similar anti-globalist orientation and has enjoyed a meteoric rise since 2021, has opted to stay out of the left-nationalist coalition, at least for now. The party, which is Euroskeptic and has called for Bulgaria’s withdrawal from NATO, maintains control over 15% of the seats and is the third-largest force in Bulgaria’s parliament.
