Strahil Deliicki, a political scientist and professor at the Sofia University ‘St. Kliment Ohridski’ and political scientist Daniel Stefanov answered online questions in the studio during the discussion. A journalist from the newspaper ‘Sega’ Luben Obretenov moderated the discussion.
During the course of the discussion the guests focused on the definitions of majoritarian and proportional electoral systems, and ways to implement them in our country. A pole was taken on the question how this would affect the eventual reform of the electoral process of political life in Bulgaria. Plenty of examples of the of the two systems in practice in other European countries made for a stormy discussion, which you can watch here:
| Strahil Deliiski:
‘Pure majoritarianism is winner takes all!
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| Daniel Sefanov:
‘When the public doesn’t know where to take over, the question arises – how do you choose the deputies?
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| Luben Obretenov:
‘The majority vote isn’t a a perfect model, but it will help overcome some of the difficulties in the Bulgarian political system – it will shorten the distance between the voter and the MP’ |
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kev3iZjczGY
In summary:
Strahil Deliiski is a fan of proportional representation for a voting system. According to the political scientist this is the system that would represent the most adequate variations in the situation that we find ourselves in at the moment in Bulgaria. He stressed that there is no universal system, and makes the link between the electoral system and what is given to the people after elections. The Alma Mater teacher doubted that the proportional system does not exclude you from the majoritarianism system. According to Deliiski democracy gives us the right to organize ourselves and it’s good when society begins to debate on changing the electoral system. The electoral system affects the outcome of the election, but it’s not perfect he added.
The more important question is how do we organize ourselves according to Daniel Stefanov. The political scientist argued by saying that our parties have become organizations whose operating principles we can not understand, and people trust politicians, not parties. What election administration do we have in Bulgaria and other important issue according to him. Stefanov supported the benefits of majoritarian system in the country, stressing that if we have a pure majoritarian system it will lead to a stable government and a stable majority.
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