According to “Alpha Research”, 33% of Bulgarians rate 2019 as better for them. For 14% the year was worse. But in the life of the largest group of respondents – 53% – the year has not brought any change.
How are these results possible in a year that has barely come to an end under the weight of scandals and elections?
We are indifferent because we are used to the mantra that politics is a dirty business and the only thing we can expect is that we will be ruled more and more dirty, but not better and better. We are used to accept our life as fatally insurmountable. So we stopped looking for an alternative. And even worse – we stopped getting angry and rebelling. We are used to defeat.
The year began with a show
– the opening of the project “Plovdiv, European Capital of Culture”.
The budget for the preparation of hosting this event was set at BGN 76.4 million, the vast majority of which – at the expense of taxpayers. A month before the start of the event, however, it turned out that money for the organization was spent in the dark. And because of the fatal habituation to the idea that the costs of culture in Bulgaria are calculated rather as “lost benefits”, the angry ones turned out to be a negligible intellectual minority.
March came with a scandal
for the price at which the former second in GERB Tsvetan Tsvetanov rides in a personal elevator to his apartment in a luxury residential building in Sofia. The Minister of Justice Tsetska Tsacheva also entered the storm with a different price – the one at which she liked an excavation for another apartment in another luxury building in the capital. But still from the same construction investor. Then Borissov settled his political accounts with both of them, but from this the justice did not win a single inch of new territory in Bulgaria, because no one refuted the suspicions that both had evaded property taxes. This is because we have long been accustomed to not distinguishing between political and civic responsibility.
Not because of the cart with which he had decorated the roof of his three- storey apartment but again because of suspicions that he had evaded taxes – instead of fighting for the post of Chief Prosecutor, the former head of the anti-corruption commission Plamen Georgiev entered diplomacy – sent as a Consul to Valencia. He flew away accompanied only by a few bitter taunts about his clumsy Spanish. And he left behind the declaration “I will not explain myself”. We accepted it because of our habit of not resisting excessive arrogance. The same one with which the Minister of Finance Vladislav Goranov came out completely dry from the investigation for conflict of interests, after he himself admitted that since 2012 he has been living for free in a 180-square-meter apartment bought by his godfather in a luxury residential complex of the brothers Kiril and Georgi Domuschievi.
The same happened with
“mothers-in-law’s houses” in April
Then it turned out that the owners of more than 250 guest houses, built with grants from European Union programs, used them as private villas. Among the beneficiaries were former Deputy Economy Minister Alexander Manolev and relatives of MRF padded leader Mustafa Karadaya. Manolev said goodbye to his position. Karadaya will probably be re-elected as the party’s operative chairman this year. Thus, we practiced our habit of accepting MRF as a political enclave, and its leaders as indisputably entitled.
In May we welcomed Pope Francis.
In the three days of his visit, we were listening to the blessing of meaningful, responsible and frank speaking of a leader with mission. But we also understood once again that in its current composition the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church is a scholastic body, incapable of moving forward. That is why the promotion of corporal punishment as a means of getting on the right path came again from there.
According to the bishops, the possible criminalization of the educational slaps would become a reason for “total disobedience of the child towards his parents and uncontrolled development of the child’s personality”. We allowed it because of the humble habit of accepting the clergy as devoid of common sense by default.
The hacker attack on the National Revenue Agency woke up the sleeping July
with the leakage of personal data of 4 million people. But the quake, caused by the inability to keep them secret, did not trigger a tsunami of lawsuits, because we have long been accustomed to treat our country as a wastrel who cannot be relied on. And thus let her respond to us with contempt.
Again because of this reason
the holiday August was overshadowed
by two other crises.
African swine fever was the first to attack. Twenty days later, the SJC’s prosecutorial board unanimously nominated Ivan Geshev as the next chief prosecutor. The sanitary slaughter of pigs because the plague has sparked protests. Geshev’s nomination – too. But due to a repressive tradition imposed in the 50s of the last century, in moments critical to the state, pigs in our country are more important than humans. This is probably why the clumsy attempts to stop the plague came on TV more often than the efforts of the citizens to stop the “Geshevization” of the prosecutor’s office.
Because of the attempt to reverse this proportion
in mid-september, BNR’s “Horizon” program fell silent for five hours
The official explanation for the blank air was the fake news about “prophylaxis of transmitters”. The real reason – no one wanted to host the morning block of the radio after the journalist Silvia Velikova was taken off air because of her critical position on the non-alternative nomination of Geshev for new chief prosecutor.
So, for the next time, we had to get used to the thought that “pork mess” will continue to be the visible result of everything that happens in the backyards of the state.
The local elections in October were no exception.
In two polling stations, in the village of Bozveliysko in Provadia District and in the village of Koprivlen in Pirin, ballots were found, filled with disappearing (invisible) ink – a technology that we will probably have to get used to from now on.
We are also used to the thought that a failed Deputy Prime Minister like Valery Simeonov, removed from office due to unacceptable arrogance, could be elected Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly.
We were accustomed to the lack of criticism of the arbitrariness of the “jeep” authority, with the fact that the journalists who came for a briefing with the newly elected President of the EC Ursula von der Leyen may find themselves with dismantled microphones, that Bulgaria has become a republic ruled by a caste of eternally innocent and the contrary will never be proved.
Therefore, according to another result of the “Alpha Research” survey, “the demotivating results of civic pressure for change in the principles and quality of governance” have led to the fact that achieving more justice is a priority for only 12% of respondents.
We got used to all this in 2019. We start 2020. I hope it will be angrier!
