site.btaMedia Review: November 8

PROTESTS OVER A STAGE PLAY

A small yet agitated, strongly motivated and obviously well-groomed crowd claiming to be acting from “patriotic” motives caused turmoil in front of the National Theatre in Sofia on Thursday evening, keeping ticket-holders from entering the theatre and practically ruining the premiere of the play “Arms and the Man” by George Bernard Shaw, directed by American actor, producer and director John Malkovich, MediaPool.bg reports in its top story. The news is widely covered in the national media.

The show started after a 50-minute delay, to a small audience of experts and journalists, the website says. Arguing that the play humiliates the Bulgarian people, the protesters chanted “Resign!” and “Scum”. Among them were Tsoncho Ganev and Kosta Stoyanov of the Vazrazhdane party, Krasimir Karakachanov and Angel Dzhambazki of VMRO, and Bulgarian National Unification leader Georgi Georgiev. National Theatre Director Vasil Vasilev advised the protesters to watch the play first, to see for themselves whether there is anything humiliating in it, but people pushed him and spat at him, and police intervened. A few people burst into the theatre, but law enforcers made them to leave the building.

MediaPool.bg goes on to quote Culture Minister Nayden Todorov as saying that “Arms and the Man” has been staged several times in Bulgaria: in Vratsa, Sofia and Ruse in 2010, and fetched a best director award in 1996. Set during the Serbo-Bulgarian War of 1885, the play “shows the heroism of the Bulgarian soldiers, who humiliated the Serb soldiers and their Austrian officers,” Todorov said, wondering how this can be humiliating to the Bulgarians. After reading the play twice, the only uncomplimentary things which the Culture Minister found about the Bulgarians were that some of them did not shower and had no books. This is nothing compared to Aleko Konstantinov’s classic novel “Bay Ganyo,” the minister argued. “Bay Ganyo” (1895) is a scathing satire whose main character has been a household word for the uneducated, profit-driven Bulgarian, and is sometimes used to refer to the Bulgarians in general.

G. B. Shaw’s comedy “Arms and the Man” was first staged in 1894 and was very successful. It made the great Irishman popular as a playwright. “Using the language of comedy, it ridicules the public attitudes of glorification of war by revealing their contradictory nature and unnecessary romanticization,” the National Theatre says in a description of the play, as quoted by the website. However, Thursday’s protesters saw “Arms and the Man” as a “disgrace” and a “shameful anti-Bulgarian play.” They believe it “distorts Bulgarian history and offends the dignity and the legacy of our national heroes,” the website reports.

A few days ago, John Malkovich said in a comment: “All I can do is be amused by the assumption that I would come here to stage a play to mock Bulgaria. This is not a very smart idea.” (This, and the next quote from Malkovich, are based on a Bulgarian translation of his words.) The two-time Oscar nominee recalled that he had directed “Arms and the Man” on Boadway in 1985 and remembered it “as very entertaining and touching."
 
During the protests, the police “watched, tolerated, and protected those raging Fascists,” according to the renowned Bulgarian-born Canadian animator Theodore Ushev, whose comment, originally from a Facebook post, appears in a separate item on MediaPool.bg. Ushev says: “I was supposed to be watching a play at the National Theatre. I was happy that on my last day in Bulgaria I was able to watch a production of the great John Malkovich.” Ushev gives his personal account of the protests: “The whole fierce crowd hurled at us. They kicked us, cursed, spat, poured all sorts of liquids, hit us with flag sticks.” Meanwhile, “the police were once again performing a decorative function.”

Print dailies carry frontpage photos of the protests. Page-one headlines run as follows: “Smoke Bombs, Beatings, and Blockade at National Theatre over Malkovich’s Premiere” (24 Chasa); “Turmoil in Front of National Theatre” (Telegraph); and “Riot over Anti-Bulgarian Play at National Theatre” (Trud).

ECONOMY

“Lukoil: Grand Bidding Still Down the Road,” runs a headline in the Capital weekly. The magazine says that the battle for the Bulgarian business of Russian energy group Lukoil has not ended yet. There are about a dozen “willing” buyers in the home stretch, among them KazMunayGas, Socar, and MOL. A change in the local or global political situation may cause a change of plan. Lukoil’s oil refinery in Bulgaria, Neftochim Burgas, earned BGN 8.6 billion in revenues in 2023. It is the biggest company in this country, the story says. 

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Social insurance contributions towards a pension may rise by between BGN 32.31 and BGN 112.5 per month for 2.8 million Bulgarians, 24 Chasa says in its main story. The possibility is discussed in connection with measures to lower the government deficit to 3% of GDP, proposed by caretaker Minister of Finance Lyudmila Petkova, which will be discussed with politicians, trade unions and employers. Other ideas include postponing pay increases in education, the Interior Ministry system and defence, imposing a super profits tax on banks, and tax amnesty for undeclared profits and incomes. Estimates show that if the measures are approved, 30.35 of the average employee’s wage will go towards social and health insurance, which will put an additional BGN 1.8 billion annually into the public purse. National Social Security Institute experts also say that it is necessary to increase social insurance contributions, but their idea is about a gradual process over the next 20 years, the daily notes.

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Bulgarians fear a drain on their pockets this winter, Trud says in its main story, covering a poll by the National Statistical Institute (NSI). Rather than inflation and rising prices, people are bracing for a worsening economic situation, growing unemployment and the effects of government deficit control measures, the poll shows. The NSI reports public pessimism about the development of the economic situation in Bulgaria and their own financial position in the next 12 months. At the same time, the number of millionaires in the country is record-high.

POLITICS

The BSP-United Left Coalition and the There Is Such a People Party signed a joint petition to the Constitutional Court to declare the October 27 early parliamentary elections as unlawful and to rule in favour of a partial annulment of the vote, according to the main story in Duma. Also, the two political entities launched a sign-in campaign to support another petition to the Constitutional Court, which will seek to reinstate the powers of the President of Bulgaria as regards the formation of a caretaker government. The news was reported by Borislav Gutsanov, floor leader of the BSP for Bulgaria group in the outgoing parliament and MP-elect in the next parliament. The BSP-United Left will defend the Constitution the way it was adopted 33 years ago, Gutsanov proclaimed.

DONALD TRUMP’S VICTORY

A dead serious Donald Trump wearing a red campaign hat, with the motto “Make America great again” printed on it, looks through a glass partition and says: “Hello, Europe!” This can be seen on the cover of the Capital weekly. In separate articles, the magazine discusses the outcome of the presidential elections in the United States, the likely effect on Europe and Bulgaria, the implications for corporate America, and Washington’s future relations with Beijing.

Capital says that Trump’s return to the White House may not be the kind of shock that politicians and analysts experienced eight years ago, but it has shaken the global political scene and economy. Europe, including Bulgaria, will be rocked by many of the waves from the turn taken in Washington. Some of the reasons for Brussels and Sofia to feel the change may be a potential cessation of US military aid to Ukraine, new taxes, and a rechannelling of investment aid. Key risks for Bulgaria include a blow to its automotive industry, a drop in exports to the US, and more limited relations with China. The magazine also notes that financial markets reacted positively to Trump’s election, which may influence the yield of financial instruments in Bulgaria.

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“Trump 2 is not a Zoroaster with a hammer anymore, but how will he respond when Putin knocks on the door and asks, trick or treat?”, international affairs analyst Martin Tabakov wonders in an interview for 24 Chasa. Asked about the main differences between Donald Trump’s presidential election victories in 2016 and now, Tabakov says that over the course of eight years Trump has drastically increased his support base among Hispanics and young voters. Moreover, he stood in these latest elections as the frontrunner, a man who had been a president already, rather than an outsider to the mainstream, which he was in 2016. By the 2024 elections, he had become the status-quo. Kamala Harris received insufficient support from female voters, but she lost not as a woman but as a party cliché against Trump’s authentic elemental force, the analyst says.

Any petty bargaining at the expense of Ukraine will affect not only that country but also the security of Europe, he argues. Asked whether Trump’s election victory has boosted the chance of forming a regular government in Bulgaria, Tabakov says it would be very sad if the formation of a Bulgarian government depended on foreign factors. “I am perfectly aware that Bulgaria does not have the resources to determine circumstances on an international level, but a minimum of decency and sovereignty is the least that we deserve as citizens. Otherwise, it would be one of many reasons that a growing number of Bulgarians go mushroom-picking on polling day instead of voting,” the analyst says.

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Observer Veselin Kirov says in Trud it is regrettable and ironic that the Democratic Party, which is historically the party of the middle class and people’s rights and freedoms, has contributed to their ruin, but as the Founding Fathers of the United States said, when a long series of acts of abuse and plunder create a risk for the people to come under the power of absolute despotism, it is the people’s right and duty to renounce such a government and elect new keepers of their own security. This is exactly what US voters did when they placed their trust in Donald Trump. It is in the best interests of the US and the world that he is successful in the next four years, Kirov says.