The official cabinet against the background of the political crisis is the news that Bulgarians are most excited about at the moment. Only four ministers from the "Denkov" cabinet remain in their post. Among them is the controversial interior minister Kalin Stoyanov, whom the PP-DB do not believe will ensure sufficiently fair elections for a new parliament. This comment on the political situation in the country was made by the political scientist Hristo Panchugov before the BNR.
In his words, this political strategy has been going on since at least 2020, when the new focus of the Democratic Bulgaria and Continuing Change campaign was the possibility that someone could steal their election.
"I think that what most threatens the results of these formations as well, but generally in the next elections, is the feeling that the elections can be stolen. And in this sense, the fixation on this topic is incomprehensible. I leave aside even the question of why this Minister of the Interior was retained as a minister until the end, that is, until the moment when the rotation was supposed to take place. Now they suddenly realized that he was the ultimate embodiment of evil.
Without wanting to defend him, I think there are deep discrepancies here that raise very serious doubts. And in this sense, let me pay attention to something important: for the first time, this official office will function, unlike the previous official offices, in the conditions of parliamentary control", said the political scientist.
Panchugov noted that in order to have meaningful elections, it must first become clear whether we will have "two in one" elections, or whether they will be divided. Second: the CEC, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament should stop listening to the contractor company that supplies the machines in terms of what it prefers.
"And third: the capacity of the CEC must be created to manage this process in its entirety. If we had foreseen all possible developments and situations, they would be communicated to the Bulgarian society and no one would have the doubt that someone could change the election results", he said. And he added that in order to create trust in the electoral process, it must be predictable and have a plan for possible development scenarios, regardless of whether it will be machine-based, paper-based, or hybrid.
"As well as that it be presented to the Bulgarian citizens early enough, with a corresponding commitment that if there are any violations, they will be removed in a timely manner. This requires a communication campaign, this requires appropriate training of the members of the sectional election commissions, this requires training of the people who will be part of the election process.
Partial responsibility for this should be taken by the state, partial of course, by the individual political parties, who should train their own people in this process. So that, in fact, a consensus is created around the fact that the elections as the main mechanism for the formation of power in Bulgaria actually provide a sufficiently fair procedure, for this to happen in the next elections. No one benefits from undermining trust in the electoral process, no matter how much it seems to politicians at the moment that this is not true in the short term," Panchugov said.
Regarding the election of ministers in the cabinet "Glavchev" and the proposal to appoint Maria Pavlova as Minister of Justice, who is the deputy of the acting chief prosecutor Borislav Sarafov, which according to PP-DB co-chairman Atanas Atanasov speaks of "dependence on GERB and DPS", Panchugov said:
"This man was a minister of this government from the PP-DB quota only a few weeks ago. How he suddenly became addicted and where they were all this time until this moment is a question worth answering, to say the least. Separately, I would like to draw attention to the following: the Ministry of Internal Affairs has so far conducted almost no successful investigations into cases related to vote buying and manipulation of election results. The ability of the Ministry of Interior to really interfere in the electoral process is deeply in doubt from my point of view. Such rhetoric serves only and only private party interests."