site.btaMedia Review: March 12

ELECTION RESULTS RECALCULATION

The saga around the recalculation of the October 2024 parliamentary election results is a leading topic in Bulgarian media.

Trud says in its main story that a letter from the Prosecution Service to the Constitutional Court blew up the recalculation process, which was going ahead until then, albeit at a slower pace than expected. On Monday, the Prosecution demanded documents, took away computers and software and stalled the work of election services provider Information Services, which was processing the data. Constitutional Court President Pavlina Panova came up with a statement claiming that institutions were sabotaging the Court's decision-making effort. On Tuesday, the Prosecution urged the Constitutional Court to name the judges who decided what election documents should be submitted to review. The National Assembly held an extraordinary sitting. President Rumen Radev commented that it is inadmissible for state bodies to impede the Constitutional Court's work as it tries to reach a decision on the lawfulness of the elections. Constitutional law expert Borislav Tsekov said: "We are witnessing a complex combination of incompetence, sabotage and evasion of responsibility."

24 Chasa says that Constitutional Court experts invalidated 780 votes cast in the elections. These included 739 votes for the parties in the current National Assembly plus Velichie (Grandeur), which was just 21 votes short of the 4% entry threshold. Most of the 780 votes "disappeared" from seven voting sections for which the Constitutional Court experts put the number of votes at zero. In these seven cases, it was either that the mayors failed to provide the ballots to be recounted, or the Constitutional Court experts had other reasons to annul the votes. It remains to be seen whether the seats in the present National Assembly will be re-allocated as a result of the recalculation. Meanwhile, Movement for Rights and Freedoms – New Beginning leader Delyan Peevski, who is said to control the Prosecution Service, called for the replacement of the Central Election Commission.

Duma says on page one that the Constitutional Court clashed with the Prosecution Service after a prosecutor from the Sofia City Prosecution Office demanded to receive all data relevant to the case. The Constitutional Court refused to provide the documents until the case is closed. At its extraordinary sitting on Tuesday, the National Assembly heard out senior executives of the Central Election Commission and Information Services. It emerged that 780 votes were "lost" after the recount ordered by the Constitutional Court and there were zero ballots in seven voting sections. BSP-United Left Floor Leader Dragomir Stoynev blamed the Constitutional Court and the Prosecution Service for "tying this knot," and warned of a looming "complete loss of trust in the Establishment."

BNT1, the main channel of Bulgarian National Television, interviewed former constitutional judge Plamen Kirov on its morning talk show on Wednesday. Kirov said: "Truths have been exposed about our election process, about democracy in Bulgaria, our understanding of the formula of parliamentary rule and the separation of powers."

SegaBG.com covers a demonstration by supporters of the Velichie (Grandeur) party, who encircled the house of Boyko Borissov, leader of the GERB party which dominates the coalition government. Velichie leader Ivelin Mihaylov claims that his party ought to enter the National Assembly after the election results are recalculated. He accuses GERB-UDF and MRF-New Beginning of trying covertly to influence the procedure and keep Velichie out of the legislature. On Tuesday, Mihaylov's people set out from the Sofia city centre, walked past the new head office of MRF-New Beginning and reached Borissov's hometown of Bankya near Sofia. Police kept them from getting too close to Borissov's house. The protesters threw sacks on the street symbolizing the sacks of ballots which have mysteriously disappeared. A group of Borissov supporters "waited patiently" nearby, as the Sofia chapter of GERB put it, to see what happens. GERB Sofia said in a declaration they will resist any acts of sabotage against the nation's development.

ECONOMY

"The Long Parting with Russian Nuclear Fuel," caps an analysis by Vladislava Peeva, published on MediaPool.bg. The analysis is based on answers to questions which the website addressed to the Kozloduy Nuclear Power Plant.

It says that last year Kozloduy's Reactor Unit 5 started a transition to running on nuclear fuel supplied by the US company Westinghouse. Reactor Unit 6 is planned to begin phasing in non-Russian fresh nuclear fuel in the autumn of 2025. Still, Kozloduy will remain dependent on fuel assemblies from Russia's TVEL company for a few more years at least, the author says. If Kozloduy gets the last two batches of TVSA-12 fuel from TVEL, agreed for delivery this coming spring, the plant will have Russian fresh nuclear fuel for six refuelling cycles at Unit 6 until 2031. It has become clear that the supply of French nuclear fuel for Unit 6, planned to take place in the autumn of 2025 under an agreement with Framatome, will be delayed by a year. Deliveries from Westinghouse for Unit 6 will begin after years of future safety analyses and licensing, because the fuel will be different from that for Unit 5.

Unit 6 seems set to use a mix of Russian, French and US nuclear fuel, provided the US type is proven compatible and safe to use with the other two. This offers a perfect chance to ensure supplies through bidding procedures under the best financial and economic terms, while keeping an eye on the safe storage and processing or burial of spent nuclear fuel, the author concludes.

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New rules will be established for quick lending operations to let borrowers know exactly how much money they should repay, 24 Chasa says in its main story. The story covers a discussion on "Responsible Lending to Protect Consumers," organized by the daily in collaboration with the Association for Responsible Non-Bank Lending (ARNL). The rules will be set by amending the Consumer Credit Act, said the chairpersons of the National Assembly Committees on Budget and Finance (BFC) and on Economic Policy (EPC), as quoted by the paper. BFC Chair Delyan Dobrev commented that the annual percentage rate currently used to determine the price of a loan should not apply to micro-lending, because otherwise the formal (non-shadow) segment of the quick lending business may be ruined.

Quick lending is also discussed in a Trud story, according to which the ARNL calls for raising the interest rate cap on quick loans that are small and have a term of less than a year. The daily quotes Consumer Protection Commission Chair Maria Filipova as saying that quick loan companies thrive at the expense of the people by going around the law.

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The euro is more Bulgarian than the lev, according to an article in the "168 Stories" section of 24 Chasa. The author says that it may be hard to believe, but there are more compelling reasons to call the euro Bulgarian than the national currency. The lev is of foreign origin, while the single European currency has a Thracian name whose connection to the Bulgarian land dates back thousands of years. The conclusion is based on research conducted by the daily. It turns out that the lev, generally assumed to be a version of the Bulgarian word for lion, has nothing to do with the king of the animal world as presented in the country's coat of arms. It is derived from an old Dutch silver coin which came to be widely used by merchants in the Eastern Mediterranean and large areas of the Ottoman Empire. As for the word "euro", it was borrowed from the old name of the Maritsa, the longest river which has its source in present-day Bulgaria, the author says.

UNITED STATES - UKRAINE

The notions of a just peace and forced peace were discussed on the morning talk show of BNT1 in the context of the Saudi-hosted negotiations on the future of Ukraine, in which Kyiv and Washington seem to have reached initial accord. International affairs analyst Martin Tabakov said on the show: "Ukraine is definitely not in a good position. But based on what we heard from Ukrainian President Zelenskyy, that he supports what was negotiated in Jeddah on Tuesday, we can infer that Kyiv is supportive, at least for now, of the negotiations with Washington." Discussing carrot-and-stick diplomacy, which he says is typical of the US, Tabakov noted: "While the stick was previously targeted mainly at Ukraine, now we see that prerequisites are emerging for the stick to sway to Russia, because, from what we heard from State Secretary Marco Rubio, the ball is now in the court of the Russian Federation."

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"Saudi Arabia: Zelenskyy's Last Chance," caps an analysis in Trud. The author, Rumen Mihailov, says that sober-minded international affairs pundits in Western Europe are far from optimistic about the future of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. They predict that Zelenskyy may be exiled or even physically liquidated if the talks between the United States and Ukraine, which began in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, prove unproductive. These scenarios are not based on Moscow's propaganda but on reports in Ukrainian media and statements by influential Ukrainian statespeople, Mihailov says.