site.btaMedia Review: March 6

POLITICS

The 24 Chasa daily frontpages an analysis of the events surrounding Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov’s resignation and the arrangement between the two largest groups in Parliament, Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) and GERB-UDF, according to which Denkov and Mariya Gabriel of GERB-UDF are to rotate as prime minister and deputy prime minister over a nine-month period, starting with Denkov. Subject to this understanding, the two parliamentary coalitions plus the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) voted the Denkov Cabinet into office on June 6, 2023. Initially, the rotation was due to take place on March 6, 2024. Currently, GERB-UDF and CC-DB are negotiating over the details to form the new cabinet.

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Commenting on GERB’s proposal to their power-sharing partner CC-DB on the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR), PR expert Lyubomir Alamanov said that, once again, GERB is trying to steal time instead of solving problems. On Tuesday, CC-DB fulfilled their commitment and Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov resigned without a lot of fuss. On the other side GERB performed a political skit worthy of Hollywood, trying to pump up their voters and try to steal time instead of solving real problems, Alamanov argued.

*On Tuesday, GERB made public the full texts of a draft agreement and decision-making mechanism, proposing to CC-DB that after December 2024, the government mandate will rotate between GERB and CC-DB every 15 months. It is in favour of drawing up a new common legislative programme, noting that the one approved in June 2023 expired in December of that year.

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In a BNR interview, Boryana Dimitrova of the Alpha Research polling agency warned that by accepting Denkov's resignation, the National Assembly gives the control of the political situation to President Rumen Radev. Thus, Radev has an opportunity to speed up the process, which is not only a technical detail, but also a political one, as an accelerated process could mean that GERB-UDF and CC-DB will not have time to iron out their differences while making attempts to form a new government.

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On bTV's morning talk show, Borislav Tsekov, an Assoc. Prof. in constitutional law and founder of the Institute for Modern Politics, said that he sees no reason for overextension of the consultations to form a new government. According to him, this should happen by the end of this week or next week, but it depends on President Radev. "If CC-DB and GERB-UDF indicate the Head of State that they need more time, I believe Rumen Radev will provide it. After all, the state interest dictates that there should be a new government within this parliament", Tsekov said. He believes that there is an understanding between the political forces on the formation of the new government and no one wants to go to early parliamentary elections.

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Commenting the political events on Nova News, sociologist Elena Darieva of the Nasoca Agency and Marchella Abrasheva of the Kantar marketing data and analytics hub, agreed that GERB-UDF and CC-DB have toned down their rhetoric against one another in the past few days. Darieva believes that the power-sharing partners are testing each other’s nerves but will reach a consensus and form a government. According to Abrasheva, the public is witnessing not political ideas and disputes, but vulgarity that discourages people. Denkov’s resignation means a new renegotiation of majority and governance, she stressed.

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Citing data from an Alpha Research poll, Mediapool.bg publishes an article titled “Delyan Peevski's Rating Hits Rock Bottom”. According to it, the approval rating of the newly elected Co-Chair of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) continues to decline and reaches critically low levels, a symptom that he is not approved even among the MRF electorate. In December 2023, Peevski’s approval rating stood at 8% (results by the Market Links polling agency) or 6% (results by Alpha Research). In early March 2024, Alpha Research says Peevski’s rating stands at 5%. His disapproval has increased to 74.4%. Given the fact that the MRF collected 9.7% of the votes at the parliamentary elections in 2023, some half of MRF’s supporters dislike Peevski, the publication further reads.

* In 2021, Peevski was designated by the US under the Global Magnitsky Act as an oligarch who "has regularly engaged in corruption, using influence peddling and bribes to protect himself from public scrutiny and exert control over key institutions and sectors in Bulgarian society." The MP is challenging the designation in a US court. His lawyers argue that there is no evidence of any wrongdoing by their client.

UPCOMING EUROPEAN PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS

Political scientist Ognyan Minchev told BNR that the upcoming 2024 European Parliamentary Elections will be the most significant European elections since the late 1970s. In Minchev's words, for the first time in decades there is no centre-left consensus in the European Parliament that the moderate right of the European People’s Party (EPP) can join. "Europe is politically divided and this will be a very contested race for control of the European Parliament. There is going to be a serious rise of more radical right-wing politics," he predicted. Over a long period of time, the Christian democratic right parties supported the EU's main progressive policies in migration, green politics and some basic social values related to a more liberal attitude towards communities and human rights, Minchev recalled, adding that over time tensions had built up in most European countries over these policies’ dominance. "Europe's populist right-wing forces has begun to mobilize and grow over the past decade. In these June elections we will see a much expanded far-right populist wing that will put alternative EU values and policies at the heart of its [pre-election] campaign [...] The EPP will have to decide whether to move a little further to the right and partner with more moderate political factions from the right-wing families, or to remain part of the left-liberal consensus that has dominated European politics so far", Minchev explained.

ENERGY

The Capital.bg and Dnevnik.bg online news outlets write that the missing roadmap, which describes the implementation of the TurkStream project on the territory of Bulgaria, has been found in a leaked correspondence of Russian politicians. The document shows that the construction of the gas pipeline was agreed in advance and all subsequent procedures were pro forma. Thus, Bulgaria has served Russia's interests in bypassing Ukraine in gas transmission, allowing Vladimir Putin to attack Kyiv, according to their articles. 

*The roadmap was signed by former energy minister of GERB, Temenuzhka Petkova, and Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller. This was followed by the construction of the TurkStream gas pipeline, which cost Bulgaria over BGN 2.5 billion excluding VAT.

JUSTICE

Commenting on the amendments to Bulgaria's Constitution, adopted conclusively by Parliament in December 2023, former justice minister Anton Stankov told the Bulgarian National Television that their flaws were immediately apparent. In his words, the fact is that the transitional and final provisions in the amendments to the Judicial System Act effectively suspended the functioning of the Constitution in its sixth chapter – The Judiciary. It was adopted that the Parliament would have a dominant influence in the Prosecutorial Council. Thus, the prosecution’s supervisory body is already becoming highly politicised and, mentioning the high-profile recent cases regarding late Martin "The Notary" Bozhanov - a person shot dead in Sofia and implicated in influence peddling in the Judiciary, and Petar "the Euro" Petrov - a former ranking investigator and a key figure in the Eight Dwarfs investigation, the question remains whether this structural model of the prosecuting magistracy facilitates or hinders the commission of crimes such as influence peddling.

*The revisions made by Parliament provide for the establishment of a separate Supreme Prosecutorial Council (SPC) of ten members: two elected directly by prosecutors, one elected directly by investigating magistrates, six elected by Parliament from among representatives of various legal professions and organizations, and the prosecutor general, who would be an ex officio member. Until the amendments, the functions of the SPC have been carried out by the Prosecutors Chamber of the Supreme Judicial Council.

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Citing law portal Lex.bg, Sega.bg publishes an article saying that illegal audio recordings of court hearings in criminal cases were made in the Sofia Regional Court (SRC) for four years by order of SRC Head Alexander Angelov. Hundreds of audio recordings were stored over a prolonged period of time on a server at the SRC, to which every judge and employee in the Criminal Division of the SRC had access. This created a risk of manipulation of the recordings and their uncontrolled distribution to third parties, according to an inspection report by the Inspectorate of the Supreme Judicial Council following a tip-off from an SRC judge, the article further reads.

HEALTH

The Trud daily frontpages an article about a breakthrough in cancer treatment. A total of 13 scientists, two of them Bulgarians, are developing a more effective drug against cancer. They have discovered a new function of the PARP1 key protein, attempting to conduct a potent PARP-inhibitor targeted anticancer therapy. Dr Radoslav Aleksandrov and Assoc. Prof. Stoyno Stoynov from the Institute of Molecular Biology with the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (IMB-BAS), members of the Laboratory of Genomic Stability and the Sofia Eurobioimaging Center for Advanced Light Microscopy, work together with their colleagues from 7 other leading European research institutes, including IMB-BAS.

POLLUTION

Speaking on Nova TV, Ivaylo Popov of the For the Earth environmental NGO said that the level of ultrafine particles in Sofia exceeds three times the extremely polluted level. Air is considered polluted when there are between some 2,000 and 10,000 ultrafine particles per cubic metre. At levels above 10,000 the air is considered extremely polluted. On Wednesday morning, For the Earth's monitor measured about 25,000 to 26,000 ultrafine particles per cubic metre in Sofia, Popov said. He warned that such values could lead to serious respiratory problems, especially in children. Another vulnerable group are outdoor sports people, as they breathe more rapidly and take in a greater amount of polluted air. "Ultrafine particles are hardly measured in our country [Bulgaria]. There is mainly research interest in them. The state monitors nitrogen oxide levels, but unfortunately the monitoring system in Sofia does not meet the requirements. The stations should be placed in the most polluted places near the streets, and the ones in the capital are located 10 meters from central streets," the expert explained.