Watch it back: Upcoming Election in Bulgaria, Political Shifts and What's at Stake

On Tuesday October 15, we interviewed Katya Koleva, the President of the Board of the Institute for Social Integration in Bulgaria (ISI), and Tanya Balova, the Executive Director of the ISI, to discuss the upcoming parliamentary election in Bulgaria which is scheduled for Sunday October 27.

Katya and Tanya briefly explained the function of the ISI in Bulgarian politics. On the one hand, it has been organizing trainings for politicians and members of civic society since they were founded in 2002. On the other hand, they are also observers of the elections to make sure that everything goes well. This is very important, as there are often problems with voting, such as a very high percentage of invalid ballots which have not been filled in correctly.

This election is already the seventh parliamentary election in the last three years, because the different political parties were not able to form a government, or because the government would collapses very soon after being formed. According to Katya and Tanya, this has not helped with the trust voters have in their politicians. This is also reflected in the low turnout at the last election in June, which was around 35%. According to Tanya, politics has become more about mathematics in recent years than about politics, as the only thing that is being discussed is the percentage of votes that every party might get and what composition of percentages could form a stable government.

Both Katya and Tanya do not expect that much will change after this election. The same parties are participating as last time, and it seems that they will get more or less the same results as last time. Neither of them would be very surprised if soon the eight parliamentary election will be scheduled after political parties again fail to form a government. Katya ended with a call to action, that more people should go out to vote and break the political stalemate.

You can watch the entire interview here: