Comment by Veselin Stoynev:
In recent days, events have accumulated that have caused strong public tension. After the water shortage in Pleven, came the flood in Elenite, and the Minister of Environment from the BSP, Manol Genov, was completely convinced that the built-up ravine is not a riverbed. Two metropolitan areas with a population of two hundred thousand were left without garbage collection after a consortium led by Christoforos Amanatidis-Taki demanded a much higher price for garbage collection, and a competing company ended up with trucks set on fire.
Three months after Toshko Yordanov from the ITN sent young doctors to Sicily and suggested that others from abroad come in their place at a salary of $500, his party colleague and Health Minister Silvi Kirilov stated that the health system does not support young doctors. A prestigious American media outlet reported that the GERB leader had offered Trump Jr. shares in infrastructure in exchange for lifting the Magnitsky sanctions on Delyan Peevski and Vladislav Goranov. The head of the anti-corruption commission Anton Slavchev threatened the deputy mayor of Varna, Dian Ivanov, that he would imprison him for 9 months if he did not testify against Mayor Blagomir Kotsev. Senior judges and prosecutors have entered into an open war over the termination of the mandates of the acting Prosecutor General and Chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court, Borislav Sarafov and Georgi Cholakov. Weeks before the submission of the 2026 budget, former Finance Minister Goranov announced that the budget deficit is currently 5-6%, and next year it will be over 8%, and called for raising taxes.
Undermined stability of the government
All this directly undermines the stability of the ruling party, regardless of whether in all these cases they are directly to blame and whether responsibility can be diluted or transferred to someone else. The root cause of the flood in the seaside resorts may date back two decades, but according to a survey of citizens for “Referendum“ on BNT, the state is primarily responsible, and Minister Genov has proven that it is still absent today. Mayor Vasil Terziev may be involved in the garbage collection problem with a delayed public procurement and a controversial lack of a maximum price, but the Ministry of Interior has not said for over three months who set fire to the trucks of the competing Turkish company in order to reject it from the competition, and its offer was to collect the garbage more than twice as cheaply as Taki. Suspicious of whom, organized people began to pile old furniture and tires next to the overflowing bins and break containers for donated clothes in order to exacerbate the problem.
Boyko Borisov, instead of giving an explanation to the media for his attempts to “wash” Peevski in front of the Americans, found a convenient journalist-politician in front of his wall in Bankya to explain that he tried to intercede only for Goranov. The ruling majority is not taking any action to elect a new Supreme Judicial Council to replace the current illegitimate one with a long-expired mandate, whose prosecutorial and judicial colleges are already “at odds” against each other, after the Supreme Court of Cassation and the prosecutor's office. Instead, the Prime Minister and the Minister of Justice legitimize the illegal after July 21 acting Prosecutor General Sarafov by participating in an event organized by him of the Balkan Prosecutors General.
Citizens and professionals - the main threat to the government
To all this, the opposition - both pro-European and Russophile - is expectedly reacting sharply with angry accusations against the ruling party, with demands for resignations, parliamentary inquiry committees and new votes of no confidence. But the serious shaking of the government comes from the citizens and professional guilds, which as a result may also infuse strength into the opposition formations. Numerous initiatives of civil solidarity have arisen to deal with the garbage crisis - volunteers and companies with trucks collect waste in “Lyulin“ and “Krasno Selo“. Scientists from the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, not the government, revealed the truth about the flood in Elenite. Young doctors, who are not today, but will be the backbone of the healthcare system tomorrow, are protesting again and will probably receive even stronger public support than before. The highest magistrates of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the majority of the judges in the Supreme Judicial Council have clearly stated that Sarafov and Cholakov are illegitimate and a collapse in the justice system is looming if the election of at least temporary heads of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Judicial Council is delayed, and it is already obvious even to non-lawyers that it will explode if they turn out to be the next Sarafovites and Cholakovites. And prominent lawyers are calling for a citizen's arrest of the impostor Sarafov.
The rulers in this situation go into a nervous defense - especially through the spokesmen of the small parties in the majority (for example, according to a municipal councilor from the BSP in Sofia, it was not the mafia, but big capital, when it comes to the rejected contract with the companies around Taki). But in their attempts to launch another attack against representatives of the opposition in the local government, they get the opposite result. After the arrest of the mayor of Varna Kotsev, who was turned into a victim by confession and of the leader of GERB, now for the second time after the transport strike in Sofia, mayor Terziev is becoming a hero, gaining popularity. And the focus of all the problems that undermine the government in the eyes of more and more people is Peevski and the dependence of the government on him – from the garbage crisis to the judiciary.
And without taking it over from within, Peevski is destroying GERB
And the more unforgivingly visible this dependence is, the more impossible it is to overcome. According to one of the leaders of the opposition - Bozhidar Bozhanov, Peevski is holding Borisov back through Sarafov in the case of businessman Vasil Bozhkov for coercion by the then Finance Minister Goranov and the then Prime Minister Borisov to give them a total of 60 million leva. Because only the Prosecutor General can resume this case, after the two-year period from the termination of the investigation expires in mid-December.
If this is the case, Borisov cannot afford to risk the Prosecutor General, if not Sarafov himself, being a Sarafovite (because one cannot risk the Chief turning around in the finale like Geshev). However, this means that at some point Borisov will have to be ready to sacrifice the entire executive branch for the sake of preserving the status quo in the prosecutorial branch. And in the end, Peevski, without taking over his party from within like the MRF, will destroy it in the next elections, whenever they are. As for the BSP and the ITN, they are already doomed to vegetative survival.