Bulgarian Socialist Party to form broad coalition with pro-Russian, nationalist parties

In an effort to increase its political influence in the EU’s poorest country, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), which is part of the EU Socialists (PES), announced this week an official move to form a broad coalition with pro-Russian and nationalist parties.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party has always maintained a clear pro-Russian position because it is the direct successor of the totalitarian Communist Party that ruled Bulgaria after World War II until the collapse of the Soviet system in Eastern Europe in 1989.

Party leader Kornelia Ninova began to change the party’s left-progressive political character in the direction of nationalist rhetoric. Currently, the BSP has 10% of the deputies in the Bulgarian parliament.

“We are against the flag that the Party of European Socialists (PES) has been waving in recent years to implement the Istanbul Convention, to recognise 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,” Ninova explained.

“I am happy about (Robert) Fico’s victory in Slovakia,” commented Ninova in an interview with bTV on Tuesday. She explained the BSP’s “patriotic turn” with the changes at the global level.

“The pendulum swings from extreme liberalism to the other extreme – fascism. We have to stop it in the middle,” Ninova said and stated the motto of the patriotic union – “protection of Bulgarian interests within the EU”.

The first test for the Bulgarian “nationalist left” will be the European elections in June, where the BSP will compete with the radical pro-Russian eurosceptic party Vazrazhdane, which insists on ending Bulgaria’s membership in NATO and questions the country’s membership in the EU.

Ninova announced that the new left-nationalist bloc will include 16 parties with which the BSP worked in the last local elections 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 said.

Among the parties with which the BSP worked during the local elections are the radical anti-European pro-Russian and pro-Putin party Ataka headed by Volen Siderov, which is also now part of the coalition, as well as the Russophile formation of Nikolay Malinov, currently facing a Bulgarian court on charges of espionage for the benefit of Russian oligarchs.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)