The “informal leaders” of Bulgaria’s nationwide protests are a motley lot with diverse backgrounds, including Russophiles, self-proclaimed consumer rights activists, anti-smoking ban campaigners and a LGBT rights advocate – and no mistake should be made that most emerged recently, unaccustomed to public speaking.

No mistake should be made, either, that there is a single unified leadership of the protest; on the contrary, in some cases mutual animosity and dissension are the order of the day. Some leaders do not recognise others as leaders and at least one “organiser” balks at being called that.

The current protests are the largest in many years, but also represent a culmination of previous protests in Bulgaria. In some respects, the current protests invoke traditions established in Bulgaria’s protests in 1990 and in 1996/97. But in comparison with the latter, there is at least one notable difference – the absence of a mobilised student body, as such. Another is the role of social networks, not only for mobilisation, but also for propagating conspiracy theories about what these protests are really about and who is really behind them.

Layer on layer

Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev’s March 1 “public council” meeting of invited representatives of the protesters, business and trade union groups and NGOs was a flop, but it did provide the only list so far of “recognised” protest leaders. In turn, this list was criticised by protesters who said the leaders named did not represent them.

The names on the “public council” meeting list included several that have seen the light of day before, in a different context.

Angel Slavchev, Mariana Hristova, Yanko Andreev and Svetlin Tachev all were involved with the anti-shale gas protests in 2012 that led to Boiko Borissov’s ruling party GERB voting a moratorium on exploring for and extracting shale gas – a move that, leaving aside the highly emotional debate on the ecological aspects of shale gas, was seen as a victory for