Bulgaria: A failed state in Europe
- By Heiko Khoo and Bojan Stanislawski
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E-mail China.org.cn, January 26, 2014
The former Bulgarian Monarch Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was elected Prime Minister in 2001, but when his party base split, a BSP led coalition government was returned to power in 2005. Bulgaria joined the European Union (EU) in 2007 but then came the global economic crisis. Dreams of rapid improvements in living standards through EU membership faded away, as the economy of neighboring Greece collapsed. Bulgaria is now the poorest EU member state: wages are stagnant; living standards are falling; a quarter of its people live in poverty; and social services are breaking down. On top of this, electricity prices and the cost of other essentials have risen dramatically. These conditions gave rise to an outburst of popular unrest. This took the form of waves of mass street protests, which have lasted for over 200 days.
A video of a seven year-old boy has gone viral -- it confirms the Bulgarian proverb, "If you want to know the truth ask a child." He grabbed a microphone on a recent protest and shouted "We can't stand it anymore. You can't live here! We hate the politicians, the parties, the parliament, the thieves, the mafia, we hate the nonsense around us. You can't live here!"
A right-wing Prime Minister, Boiko Borisov, was elected in 2009, but in January 2013, a huge rise in electricity and hot water bills provoked mass unrest and forced Borisov to resign. The movement was non-partisan and protested against corrupt government and the entire political system. There were seven self-immolations on the protests and the demands included calls for the nationalization of strategic sectors of the economy and a new political model.
In 2013 Plamen Oreshaski formed a new BSP led coalition government but this failed to quell the unrest. Protests have reached such a level of intensity that each and every move by the government seems to escalate the peoples' rage. For example, a shady media mogul and oligarch Delyan Pehevski, was appointed head of the National State Security Agency in June 2013, but withdrew after mass protests took place on a daily basis. Likewise environmentalists overturned the appointment of Kalin Tiholov as the Investment Planning Minister.
Last summer protestors followed government officials to their holiday retreat on the Black Sea and hounded them there. And in the autumn, students occupied the universities and have engaged in unceasing protests since then. Although the intensity of the unrest expresses the utter frustration of the majority of Bulgarians at the system of power, the trade unions have so far remained aloof. There have also been sporadic outbreaks of right-wing anti-Russian hysteria, similar to that which we have witnessed in the Ukraine recently. It appears that the number of failed states at the periphery of Europe is growing.
Heiko Khoo is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://china.org.cn/opinion/heikokhoo.htm
Bojan Stanislawski is a Bulgarian journalist based in Warsaw, Poland. He is a correspondent for the Bulgarian National Radio and editor of the international section in the Polish left-wing daily paper "Dziennik Trybuna".
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn
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