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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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• Kyrgyzstan 2001
  
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During communism the political legitimacy of the regimes was based on the pseudo scientific assumption (never proved to be correct!) that the political leaders knew better than the people what were the interest of the people itself, so there wasn't any need to make elections in the sense of competing candidates. There was only one official candidate and the election turnover was just proving the ability of the regime to make people go and vote.

After communism the legitimacy has been changed and the people finally was put at the center of the political system through its elected representatives. In some countries that was indeed what happened 15 years ago. In some states this was only proclaimed to be the case. In fact elections were rigged, and the whole election process was orchestrated. The "Party of power", the term was coined in Russia in the mid 1990s, tried to make virtually impossible any political change. In many countries they still succeed to keep intact their power, which make them in fact ultimate owners and managers of the national economy. There could be no enshrined private and public rights in a country where the state itself is a property of a small group of persons.

The political legitimacy of the regimes has changed dramatically since the good old communist times, but in many countries the political oligarchy has remained almost unchanged. To be completely honest, even in Eastern Europe more of the half of the current ministers and parliamentarians have been politically educated during communism, but in the post-USSR republics their share may reach 100%. Such regimes have at least one very strong and at least one very weak point. The strongest is that the political system is a unified oligarchy that understands its interests not only as private but also as corporative. They will always prefer to have a thug of their own to be in change instead of giving the right to the people to decide who is to rule. They cannot keep their hand on the national economy without staying in power, thus staying in power becomes for them like obsession, a goal in itself. The weakest point of these regimes is that by paying lip services to the democratic principles they must from time to time pretend they are asking the people to vote in election. But what if the population decides to vote for the politically incorrect candidates?

For the forth time since 2000 the ruling pseudo-democratic regime is crumbling after trying to rig elections. The pattern seems remarkably similar as the nature of these regimes seems remarkably analogous. Before announcing the official results that give the victory to the government the opposition announces its own parallel results that show the regime has lost the election. Then begins a struggle to mobilize the public opinion for and against the government. At one point the regime looses nerves and calls the security forces to crack down on the opposition. The security forces try not to interfere and make this intention public. The effect is that the opposition gains moral ground and with the security forces not following the orders to shoot the regime quickly disintegrates. A new regime is installed where elements of the old regime coexist with the revolutionary opposition. The security chiefs which passivity was used against the old dictators are incorporated into the new power structures.

Are there ways to avoid such revolutionary outcomes? There are and they are surprisingly many. The first most obvious is to allow the opposition to compete for power and to take the power if elected. That's the way they do it in Central and Eastern Europe for more than 15 years and it works. The leaders the people dislike are voted out of office, using ballots and not bullets with the only prominent exception of Milosevic in Serbia. The second most obvious way to avoid post-election revolution is to stop making elections. Turkmenistan has gone farthest than any other dictatorship in this direction. Belarus and Russia look for lessons that can be drawn from the leading Turkmenistan experience. The third way is for the government to take the slogans from the opposition like in Moldova but this only postpones the revolutionary outcome. Georgia under Shevardnadze was a pro-western country but nevertheless he was toppled by other pro-western persons.

The only way for the pseudo-democratic regimes in the former USSR that won't stop the revolutionary wave is to pretend that such event cannot happen in their countries just because it cannot happen. If it may happen in Kyrgyzstan then it may happen almost anywhere. It's just a matter of time till somewhere else the government calls for election, either presidential, or for parliament.

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