52655 | 22 April 2026 | 14:20

The blatant attitude towards the nomination of Yavor Bozhanov and Daniel Lorer by DB, as well as the nonchalant rejection of Manol Peykov, show that Asen Vassilev is not afraid to break the coalition ties with the sole-controlled CC and DB

Ognian Minchev, Facebook:

 CC-DB can officially split or they can remain formally in one coalition, where both parties integrate with the same success as oil and water. If we disregard the remaining under the name "DSB", DB (Yes, Bulgaria) is a community where most of the members have a high enough opinion of their own qualities to be built in the form of a political hierarchy.

 The leadership of DB has always been disputed, corrected, and tolerated "through gritted teeth" by a considerable part of the party, which has its own political ambitions - and does not hide them. This, of course, creates a certain chaos, which is very characteristic of the so-called "democratic community" since its creation in November 1989. There are many personalities here and the DP is progressing - as it is progressing - thanks to the preferences that these personalities receive independently from each other, not only in elections, but also in many other situations.

 CC was also created on the principle of "double leadership", around which gathered personalities with successful careers, not older than 40 years and able to impose their own ego in a model of difficult intra-party communication and decision-making mechanism. It is no coincidence that the party has survived for about 5 years as a "cloud" construction - during that time no one managed to build it as an organization and hierarchy. Asen Vasilev put an end to this. He understood that in modern Bulgaria only leadership party projects thrive and made the necessary decisions. Kiril, Lena and many other prominent figures in the CC were retired and filled the top echelon of the party with "gray mice", whose main quality is obedience.

 The next step of the "strong leader" was the ruthless attempt to "discipline" the coalition partner DB... Even in the initial period of cooperation between the two parties, the leadership group of the PP shamelessly overlooked DB, especially in the selection of candidate deputies. The CC's demands for "squares" treated DB entirely as "poor relatives", to whom they could throw a piece of banitsa, but not too big.

 This approach was particularly strengthened by the realization that valuable personalities from DB easily break through the "grid" with preferences and leave the CC in an arithmetical minority in the overall parliamentary group. I believe these were the last elections in which Asen Vassilev will tolerate this state of affairs. His brazen attitude towards the nomination of Yavor Bozhankov and Daniel Lorere by DB, as well as his unconcerned rejection of Manol Peykov since yesterday, show that Vassilev is not afraid to sever the coalition ties with the DB-controlled CC.

 The DB is also at the limit of its patience - not only because of the difficult relations between the management team and some members. It is not pleasant to be openly treated as the "second violin" in the orchestra, especially considering that the "first violin" does not play better than you. But the main problem of the coalition with the CC for DB stems from its hereditary ties with the "democratic community" of Bulgaria's recent past.

 In 2016, Democratic Bulgaria (DB) was created as a branch, specifically a partial continuation, of the dissolved political body "Democratic Community" (SDS-Blue Coalition-RF, etc.). This branch was thematically isolated - fighting corruption and institutional (judicial) reform, with a political positioning in the liberal center.

 A year or two ago, the leadership of DB realized that these self-imposed limitations - on the subject of activity and political positioning - isolate the party even from the hypothetical possibility of "returning" or leading a recovering unity of the "urban right" - i.e. the blue community, which was last together in the form of the Reformist Bloc.

 The leadership of DB has made a decision for a "right turn" - towards a center-right identity, membership in the party family of EPP and - in this way - distancing itself from its coalition partner CC, which is trying to stay in the "political center" through rhetorical efforts, in order not to fall completely to the left - where it belongs. In the coming weeks and months, this coalition - CC-DB- will become more difficult and unpromising.

 Regardless of the extent to which Progressive Bulgaria will be engaged in forming a qualified majority in the National Assembly (let's not forget that this majority can also be formed with GERB, and with the "softened" leader of MRF, and with "defected" MPs from parliamentary groups), the two parts of CC-DBwill psychologically and politically represent two poles, rather than a political community with a common platform.

 Asen Vassilev may take advantage of the catastrophe of the traditional left on April 19 to initiate a new center-left block - naturally, under his leadership. While for the Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB) the opportunity arises to try to expand its boundaries towards the unrepresented remaining parts of the former "democratic community", with the goal of reconstructing it into some new right-wing format. Apart from everything else, Radev's governance will undoubtedly lead to the need for the revival of unity in the "democratic community" on a geopolitical - pro-European basis.

 As a coalition, the CC-DB is a fragile remnant of a period of political crisis and fragmentation, in which alternative parties to the status quo fought for a comprehensive societal and institutional anti-oligarchic reform, but due to various reasons, self-reduced to chaotic efforts for their own survival.

 They lacked the strength for societal transformation and the discrepancy between their ambitious goals and their actual political potential is now enough justification for them to end their painful coexistence, which brings no satisfaction to either of them.

 Bulgaria is in a new political situation in which previous alliances and rivalries will largely lose their former meaning.