„What we are seeing at the moment, especially after Mr. Ivanov's refusal to testify, is a case that has been left in the air, which has no legal case, no criminal record behind it. But it has all the signs of a powerful political repression from the moment of the arrest through the completely illegal transfer of jurisdiction from the Varna Court to the Sofia City Court and, above all, the fact that pressure was exerted and witness statements were extracted through pressure.“
This was stated in „Face to Face“ EPP MEP Radan Kanev on the arrest of Varna Mayor Blagomir Kotsev.
„I want to emphasize that in this statement, Mr. Ivanov accuses the CCP agents of a very serious crime. We are talking about three to 10 years of imprisonment in the main composition. We are faced with the need for a further investigation, namely that the CCP agents who conducted this interrogation should be investigated for committing a serious official crime“, he added.
According to him, Kotsev's arrest is illegal and repressive, and is a sign of the bigger picture of what is happening in the country.
„The series of data on electoral justice, which shows that one political force is in the sights of all repressive bodies in Bulgaria. My explanation, based on long-term observations of the phenomena in the Bulgarian justice system, I would also say of the Peevski phenomenon, is that this is a very advanced attempt to replace the political, to replace it entirely with shady and politically illegitimate influences. An attempt that seeks a Bulgaria very similar to the Bulgaria of the 70s and 80s, when behind the facade of a helpless and senile Politburo, in fact, the State Security Service held all the levers of repressive power, but above all, of economic power. If we go back to those times, we will remember that this replacement of public power with shady power of the services ended in an economic catastrophe“, Kanev noted.
In his words, GERB will sooner or later become victims of the repressive apparatus. And when asked who the shadow Politburo was, the MEP replied:
„I listened with interest to Mr. Borisov, who said „It is not true that someone has more control than me“. In the same way, Mr. Zhivkov in the late 80s, behind a charming Shopsian humor, hid his political impotence and the awareness that the state is now governed by completely different mechanisms. GERB will be, on the principle of corporate raiding, either placed under control or subjected to the same attacks that PP and DB are currently subjected to. There are many people in GERB who will not be easily brought under control and they will automatically be the next victims of this repressive machine if it is not stopped in time“.
„We are facing a problem that goes far beyond party political considerations, and it is about the normal functioning of a democratic state, a member of the EU, the risk of democracy being replaced in the way it happened in Hungary or even worse – in Georgia. Because Mr. Peevski and the business organization around him are following the scenario of Mr. Ivanishvili in Georgia most closely, which ended with the practical replacement of state institutions by a business organization, the dismantling of the state as an institutional phenomenon“, added Radan Kanev.