“The first actions of the cabinet seem to be in the right direction to ensure fair elections, but we will judge by the results.” This was stated by the co-chairman of “Yes, Bulgaria” Bozhidar Bozhanov in an interview for “Sunday 150” on the Bulgarian National Radio.
According to him, the composition of the Council of Ministers seems to be expertly selected, and the political connections of individual ministers are with different political forces and in the past. But whatever the composition of the government was, because of Andrey Gyurov, who was the chairman of the parliamentary group of “We Continue the Change”, the question of whether it was not of the PP-DB would still be asked. “And for Dimitar Glavchev, it quickly became clear that he was not even GERB, but Peevski. And his entire cabinet was Peevski's. And since the protest demanded the removal of the “Peevski and Borisov” model from power, the choice of Gyurov was logical”, said Bozhidar Bozhanov.
He accepts the position of the Deputy Prime Minister for Fair Elections Stoil Tsitselkov that he has been rehabilitated and his problems with the law are in the past, as well as his act of resigning because he cannot afford to question the fairness of the vote. And the data extracted about Tsitselkov “from the poodles of GERB - “There are such people”, have cast doubt on his motivation for fair elections.
The expectation of the co-chairman of “Yes, Bulgaria is not just that the Ministry of Interior should not behave like it did with Kalin Stoyanov and Atanas Ilkov, but that the money taps used to buy elections should be stopped and that the pressure of all kinds of institutions on business and citizens for electoral purposes should cease. “Yesterday we were in Kardzhali at a meeting with people from business and they asked exactly this - how will the pressure from the control bodies be stopped. One person who participated in the organization of the protests in Kardzhali said that the next day he received checks from everywhere. They go around the bodies and say - your employees will vote in a certain way, otherwise you will have problems. The goal now is for this pressure to stop, not to turn in another direction”, said Bozhidar Bozhanov.
He described as positive and expected the decision of the Minister of Justice Andrey Yankulov to convene the Supreme Judicial Council to remove Borislav Sarafov from the post of acting prosecutor general. “When it was felt that the wind was blowing in a different direction, the long-standing dissatisfaction in the system came to the surface. The former chairman of the Prosecutors' Association went on television and declared himself against Sarafov”, said Bozhanov, recalling the interview of the former Pleven district prosecutor Vladimir Nikolov. And he reminded that unlike Yankulov, the previous Minister of Justice did not ask the Supreme Judicial Council to release Sarafov, although he was even called upon to do so by a parliamentary declaration from the PP-DB.
According to Bozhanov, there is a systemic problem in the prosecutor's office and other institutions, which is the result of many years of management with telephone calls. The institutionally empowered do not make decisions on their own conscience, but with calls and pressure through dependencies. “This creates personnel anti-selection and these systems cease to function. Our goal is for this to change, but it is a long process”, said the co-chair of “Yes, Bulgaria”. And he reminded that a serious change in the judicial system can only occur after the election of a new Supreme Judicial Council.
“We wanted to elect the SJC back in 2024, after the changes to the constitution and a new Law on the Judiciary, prepared by the team of Minister Atanas Slavov. Our condition was that there should be no Peevski quota in the SJC, and that is why GERB overthrew the government. If Peevski, Borisov and anyone else after that stop pressuring opponents and crushing them, we will be able to freely elect the Supreme Judicial Council”, said Bojanov.
Asked to comment on the emergence of Rumen Radev's new formation, to which the first sociological surveys assign a categorical first place with a large lead, Bojanov said: “When a new player appears on the political scene, it quickly stirs up the whole picture and it takes time for this to settle down, to settle down, to see where it is going, that is why we see the differences between two surveys (by “Market Links” and “Measure”)”. And he specified that it is more important for parties to look at these snapshots of public attitudes not as an election forecast, but to see where their potential lies.
For “Yes, Bulgaria” he is in the fight against corruption and for a rule of law - without abuse of power, through institutional guarantees and bearing political responsibility”, and the European future of Bulgaria. In his words, Bulgaria cannot afford to be a Trojan horse in the EU like Hungary - at the very least, this has led to impoverishment, and it must actively participate in changing Europe so that it is less bureaucratic and catches up with the lag in technological sectors.
“Our strategy for the elections can be united in something that my colleague Ivaylo Mirchev wrote a month ago and the entire coalition says - Strong Bulgaria in a strong Europe. We must strengthen our institutions and be a loyal partner in Europe, because this is the surest way to increase welfare, and this is also a union of values that allows for the development of society”, said the co-chair of “Yes, Bulgaria”.