site.btaMedia Review: June 26

CABINET OPTIONS

A front-page signed comment in Duma describes as "balderdash" the plans of GERB leader Boyko Borissov and Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) leader Delyan Peevski to propose legitimate governance backed by less than a third of Bulgarian citizens. "This new government will merely deepen the anyway complete despair that anything can ever change in Bulgaria," the author notes.

"Unlike previous cabinet forming rounds, everybody seem to claim the third mandate," political scientist Stoycho Stoychev said on bTV Wednesday morning, adding that "only Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria have not claimed it for the time being." He sees this as an indication that political forces do not have a clear idea of where they are going. "Political impotence has settled in Bulgaria's Parliament," political scientist Lyubomir Stefanov commented on the same show. "Once the elections are over, politicians realize that they must run the country. When they become aware that nobody can come to term with anybody else, they work down a list."

Interviewed on Bulgarian National Radio, Prof. Nikolay Radulov, former Interior Ministry secretary general and former MP of There Is Such a People (TISP), said that whatever cabinet is formed, elections will follow within five to six months' time, probably early next year. In his opinion, a minority cabinet cannot be stable and long-lived. Radulov strongly doubts TISP's capability to put together an expert cabinet. "An alliance of all parties except GERB and the MRF is impossible, considering the statements they made to their voters during the election campaign," Radulov also said. He added that "the relations between the TISP leadership and the GERB leadership have always been relatively close." "An expert cabinet is a way for TISP to back a cabinet dominated by GERB and the MRF without discrediting itself to its voters," the expert pointed out.

WHY VOTERS DON'T VOTE

www.dnevnik.bg runs an analysis by Antony Todorov, according to which the number of voters casting ballots in Bulgaria's elections has been steadily declining since 1990. The author formulates three possible reasons: voter fatigue after six consecutive parliamentary elections over the last three years (plus two presidential and one round of local elections); unavailability of good candidates to vote for; and erosion of the public prestige of politics in general. "To many citizens, politics has lost its most essential function: to enable us to live together despite our differences," the expert notes. "Politics seems to have turned into 'just business,' a means to achieve private ends, a field for trade in influence and resources, a private pursuit for politicians, in which citizens do not see a point of getting involved and even give up voting as the easiest way to participate in political life," Todorov observes. 

ELECTION CAMPAIGN FUNDING

A page-long item in Duma details the sums collected and spent by parties on the campaign for the June 9 national and European parliamentary elections. Thirteen of the parties that contested the early parliamentary elections declared donations totalling BGN 500,743. MP candidates fielded by 14 contestants spent BGN 845,820 on their campaign. In the European Parliament election campaign, only four entities raised 39 cash donations from natural persons aggregating BGN 69,176. The candidates of seven entities collected BGN 123,488 in non-cash contributions. 

NORTH MACEDONIA

Under the heading "Do We Have any Powerholders, Do We Have any Foreign Ministry?" Viktoria Georgieva comments in Trud that while Hristijan Mickoski was leader of just one of the opposition parties in North Macedonia, his constant insults of Bulgaria were largely ridiculed or even ignored in Sofia. Now that his VMRO-DPMNE party has won the elections and Mickoski has been elected prime minister, he carried on his peremptory anti-Bulgarian rhetoric and tone in his new capacity. At this point, the only more strongly worded reaction has come from MRF leader Delyan Peevski, who warned Mickoski that he was grossly violating the process of his country's EU integration and called on all Bulgarian MPs and MEPs to take a stand. For the time being, however, the Bulgarian powerholders have not responded adequately. The Foreign Ministry has not come with an official reaction. "We have already made all and just any concessions to facilitate North Macedonia's admission to the EU - both in recent years and far before that," the author writes. "All we got and continue to get in response are insults, warnings, threats, violence, falsifications, and unabated disinformation in their textbooks. We remain silent, cowardly burying our heads in the sand, expecting that the storm will pass over again. No, it won't. The very fact that Bulgaria continues to talk that North Macedonia belongs in Europe and we are ready to stomach everything, including the humiliation of our own country and our citizens, is indicative of the total political impotence of our powerholders. A country whose doctrine is based on anti-Bulgarianism has no place in the EU. Otherwise, we become the odd country out."

On bTV Wednesday morning, the latest developments in Skopje were commented by journalist Lyubcho Neshkov and Assoc. Prof. Naum Kaychev of Sofia University. "The same things have been happening there for nearly 90 years. There is no change at all," Neshkov said. Kaychev noted that the Prespa Agreement is challenged yet again. The new government in North Macedonia is "literally following in the footsteps of Nikola Gruevski who, when taking office as prime minister in 2006, renamed the stadium in Skopje Philip of Macedon and started to provoke Greece," the university lecturer pointed out.

EUROPEAN UNION

International analyst Hristo Anastasov said in the morning show of Bulgarian National Radio that "the EU is increasingly a political rather than just economic union." Regarding the launch of accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, he commented that "the whole process will be regarded in a rather different way because the stakes look rather different today. Russia is waging a full-scale war against one of the candidate countries and undermines the other in every possible way." "There are huge risks because we don't know whether they will manage to preserve their independence from the aggressor," Anastasov added.

Commenting on Hungary's position, he said: "It is important to think how to prevent Hungary from blocking important geopolitical processes. The scrapping of  consensus as a requirement for making a large part of the decisions will be a step towards a stronger Union."

"By its aggression, Russia has forced quite a few of its highly placed supporters in the EU to keep silent," the analyst noted. "The question is not whether there will be peace if arming Ukraine ceases but how grave consequences we face if it falls," he explained.

EURO CHANGEOVER

Trud reports that, under a Euro Adoption Bill that the Council of Ministers is to approve shortly, traders will be unable to increase the prices of their goods and services within one month after Bulgaria's entry into the eurozone unless this is justified by objective economic factors. In the public consultation on the draft legislation, business representatives objected to this restriction, arguing that it is unclear how these objective economic factors will be proved. The Finance Ministry countered that the control authorities will have discretion to decide whether prices have been raised without justification so as to provide greater protection to consumers. It transpired from the Ministry's comments in the public consultation that the single European currency will realistically be introduced not as from January 1, 2025 but later that year, when the inflation criterion will be met.

SOFIA PRIDE

Commenting on the Sofia Pride on an inside page in Trud, Viktor Blaskov writes that "the Pride and all other NGO activities put off the most moderate ones but empower and provide a platform to the most radical, most aggressive and noisiest members of the community. They then take front stage and speak on behalf of the entire community. People get the impression of empowered, aggressive people who parade their sexuality and actively hate everything traditional, Bulgarian and Christian."

EDUCATION

In a two-page interview for Trud, Dobroslav Dimitrov, Chairman of the Bulgarian Employers' Association Innovative Technologies (BRAIT) and member of the Advisory Board of the Bulgarian Association of Software Companies (BASSCOM), says that the foremost priority is to relieve school curricula by, say, scrapping half of the learning content. Rising to the new technological challenges requires education, reskilling and attracting talent from abroad, making the local environment attractive for living and making business, and clear trust in the rule of law. "We need people who constantly upgrade their knowledge and skills and not just any people," the interviewee argues. "We need people capable of analyzing information or even able to orient themselves in an unfamiliar situation. The concept of our entire educational system is nearly four centuries old. We must be skilled at critical thinking, at finding our way in the information overload. We will have to rediscover an occupation once every three or four years," Dimitrov says.

In its spread, Duma analyzes the relationship between educational attainment and the chances of finding a job. Better educated people more rarely find themselves out of work: out of 152,500 unemployed in the first quarter of 2024, just 9.1% are university graduates, 53.2% have secondary education, and 37.7% have primary or lower education.

EVELIN "BRENDO" BANEV

Telegraph learnt from lawyer Lyudmil Rangelov, who represents Evelin "Brendo" Banev, that his client wishes to take advantage of a cumulation of his three prison sentences: 6 years for money laundering in Bulgaria, 20 years for cocaine trafficking in Italy, and 10 years for cocaine trafficking in Romania. If the Sofia City Court grants Banev's motion and the ruling is upheld by the Appellate Court, he will have to serve the longest sentence of 20 years, which will be reduced by the time spent in pretrial detention.

Interviewed in the same daily, lawyer Emanuil Yordanov estimates that the cumulated 36 years' imprisonment may be brought down to actual 15 years.

Boyko Naydenov, former director of the National Investigation Service and former acting prosecutor general, said on Bulgarian National Television Wednesday morning that part of the money that Banev received unlawfully has been invested in real estate in Sofia and at the Black Sea coast. According to Naydenov, Banev may serve not more than 7 or 8 years.

VIOLENCE AGAINST MEDICS

Telegraph covers a national forum on "Violence against Medics: Causes and Possible Solutions" that was held in Sofia on Tuesday. At the forum, prosecutor Penka Bogdanova of the Supreme Cassation Prosecution Office cited statistics according to which the pretrial proceedings in connection with bodily harm inflicted on medics increased from 10 in 2021 to 13 in 2022 and 16 in 2023, or 39 in total. Thirty-five penalties have been imposed, but only five persons have received actual prison sentences. Of the 43 doctors assaulted, 24 were men and 19 women. In a nationally representative survey commissioned by the Bulgarian Medical Association, Trend found that 3,200 Bulgarian medics have become victims of violence at work. One in three doctors said they were afraid for their health and safety during work, and one in two said they felt emotionally exhausted and distressed owing to patients' aggressive behaviour. As many as 60% of doctors in Bulgaria have witnessed verbal aggression against a colleague, 49% have themselves been the target of verbal aggression, and 10% have been physically assaulted. In turn, 83% of the members of the general public polled believe that doctors are obliged to make faultless decisions, and 73% believe that doctors must be available at any time and respond instantly. More than half of the respondents believe that doctors must sacrifice their personal time for patient care, and 51% expect medics to know everything about anything. Nearly one in five of those polled assume that aggressive behaviour can make medics examine them speedily.

24 Chasa covers the story on two full inside pages. It writes that, according to the Trend survey, 11% of doctors run into aggression from patients or patients' close ones, another 20% do so occasionally, and 55% of hospital physicians get insulted. Because of the aggression, 16% of medics consider quitting.

FOOD PRICES

Telegraph writes that the 15% markup cap for the three commonest types of bread, effective July 1, will have a negligible effect on consumer prices as it will push up the prices of the other kinds of bread or of other foods in general. A signed comment in the same daily says that "this is the latest in a series of attempts by the State to intervene in the market, and it will obviously fail, merely adding to the bureaucratic burden." The author describes as "exceedingly naive" the targeted effect of providing affordable bread to consumers, recalling the ineffective impact on prices of the abolition of VAT on bread and the reduced VAT on restaurants, tourist services, etc.

PRESIDENT'S PAYCHECK

24 Chasa reports that the annual salary drawn up by Bulgarian President Rumen Radev before deductions is equivalent to EUR 124,658, which is over 10 times the average annual wage in the country of EUR 12,342. According to Slot.Day, which analyzed the gross paychecks of the heads of 31 states in Europe, the Bulgarian President earns 8.44 times the country's USD 16,087 GDP per capita, which is the highest proportion on the continent. "It is a paradox that the poorest country in the EU pays the highest salary to its president," the daily concludes.

DEMOGRAPHICS

Nova TV quotes the National Statistical Institute as reporting that nearly one-third of Bulgaria's 4,999 villages have a population of less than 50, and 201 settlements do not have a single resident, most of them in the regions of Veliko Tarnovo and Gabrovo (North Central Bulgaria). Eight of the country's 265 municipalities have a population of over 100,000: Sofia City, Plovdiv, Varna, Burgas, Stara Zagora, Ruse, Sliven and Pleven. More than 40% of Bulgaria's entire population lives there. On the other hand, more than half of the municipalities have a population of under 10,000. The most sparsely populated municipality is Treklyano in Kyustendil Region (Southwestern Bulgaria): pop. 522. Nine municipalities consist of a single settlement. One-sixth of the residents of Sofia Municipality live in just two of the 24 boroughs: Lyulin and Mladost, each with a population of 100,000-plus. Just eight Bulgarian cities have a larger population than these boroughs. Plovdiv's South Borough is its most populous, and the only borough in Varna with over 100,000 residents is Primorski.

MEDIA

24 Chasa covers on a full inside page the news that Russia has blocked access to the paper and online version of the daily which claims to be "the largest print media outlet in Bulgaria".

Union of Bulgarian Journalists Chair Snezhana Todorova describes the move as "terrible" and "unfair", considering that 24 Chasa is the highest circulation Bulgarian newspaper and the most visited news website. Todorova categorically opposes the blocking of any media, including Russian ones, seeing this as "gross trampling of the freedom of speech and trampling of people's right to access normal information. But this is obviously a response, reciprocating our bans. The idea is to make us hurt," Todorova comments. "Banning is stupid and horrible because what is banned becomes attractive", she argues.

Association of European Journalists - Bulgaria (AEJ) President Irina Nedeva points out that the ban is "simply ludicrous, looks like a long practised strategy of mimicking, duplicating actions taken by the EU with regard to Russian disinformation operations." She notes that most of the 81 media operators that have been banned, including 24 Chasa and Mediapool.bg, are quite powerful and important, with very high quality in the media landscape. "It seems like a demonstration of an attempt to instill fear which, however, belies fear. A primitive understanding of war and of the news front. It looks like a symptom of apprehensions or fear that information, despite the total ban on the independent press in Russia, is breaking through."