Bulgaria’s election. Can Simeon depart in peace

The search is on for a plausible coalition government to tackle judicial reform

THE voters of Bulgaria have formed the habit of throwing out governments but not giving the opposition a clear majority. That is one conclusion from the general election on June 25th, when the (ex-Communist) Bulgarian Socialist Party took 31% of the vote, less than the 40% it had hoped for. The ruling centre-right National Movement for Simeon II, led by Bulgaria's ex-king and prime minister since 2001, Simeon Saxe-Coburg, won 20%. The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a party for ethnic Turks, came third, with 13%; worryingly, a brand new nationalist party, Ataka (Attack), which stood on a racist platform aimed at the Roma minority, took 8%.

The Socialists will have just 82 seats in the 240-member parliament. The question now is: can Sergei Stanishev, the 39-year-old Socialist leader, cut a swift deal with Mr Saxe-Coburg and Ahmed Dogan, the Turkish party leader and veteran of previous coalition governments? Bulgaria cannot afford prolonged wrangling. It hopes to join the European Union, with Romania, on January 1st 2007. The accession treaties have been signed. But deadlines for judicial reform are fast approaching. Monitors from Brussels are due in Sofia at the end of August to assess progress. Although EU membership may not be in question, the monitors may conclude that it should be postponed for a year, to 2008. A delay would be costly: farmers would risk losing €500m ($610m) in subsidies, and foreign investors could go elsewhere.

A two-thirds majority in parliament is needed to approve constitutional reforms to make Bulgaria's prosecutors more effective and its judges more accountable. The rest of Europe is worried. Bulgaria's organised-crime groups specialise in cybercrime and trafficking in drugs, people and weapons. Local gangsters are reckoned to have carried out more than 50 murders in the past year, some of them in daylight in Sofia's streets. None of these crimes has been solved. Corruption among prosecutors and the judiciary makes it hard to obtain convictions even after the police arrest suspects and collect evidence, complains Boiko Borisov, who resigned as Bulgaria's chief policeman to win a parliamentary seat for Mr Saxe-Coburg's party.

The urgent need for judicial reform aside, Mr Saxe-Coburg did well as prime minister. He steered Bulgaria into NATO and towards the EU. And he turned the economy around. Foreign investment last year reached a record €2 billion, and unemployment fell from 18% to 11%. So why did the voters punish his government? One answer is that the elderly, a big part of the electorate, blamed it for a crumbling health-care system, low pensions and rural stagnation. Although less corrupt than its predecessors, the government failed to live up to its “clean-hands” promise. Transparency International, a watchdog, criticised a €700m contract for a toll road - the biggest infrastructure project in the Balkans - that went to a consortium of Portuguese and Bulgarian firms with no tender.

A grand coalition of the three big parties may be the best way of pushing through the necessary reforms ahead of the EU deadline. But finesse will be required to put it together. Mr Stanishev finds it hard to keep his party's communist-era barons under control. Mr Saxe-Coburg may insist on staying as prime minister in return for backing a Socialist-led government. The president, Georgi Purvanov, himself a former Socialist leader, may have to act as deal-maker. With luck, he may persuade Mr Stanishev to be patient and let Mr Saxe-Coburg remain long enough to see Bulgaria into the EU.