Emil Koshlukov is completing a second term at the head of BNT without being elected to it. Public television is too important to be turned into someone's fortress: it is a tribune of society, not a trophy for one person.
Comment by Emilia Milcheva:
More than three decades after the changes, one of the symbols of the democratic rise, Emil Koshlukov, guards the chair of BNT's general director as if on a barricade.
The heads of the other two public media - BTA and BNR, serve regular terms, while Koshlukov is completing a second term without being elected to it. The reason is the harassment in every possible way of the procedure for selecting a new director general, which the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) is persistently trying to carry out. Emil Koshlukov participated in the first procedure in the summer of 2022, when his term expired. He was one of the eight candidates for director general of BNT and received only one vote in his support - the other members of the regulator voted against.
The situation seems to be as if BNT does not have a director, but the director has BNT. With six years in office and the seventh one underway, Koshlukov has strived for the record of Ivan Slavkov - the son-in-law of the Bulgarian head of state under socialism, Todor Zhivkov, who managed BNT for 10 years.
The Great Distraction
Bulgaria has turned out to be the country in which mandates run but do not expire. The procedure for selecting a new head of BNT, which started three years ago, has become bogged down in lawsuits. A number of circumstances have hindered its progress - a sprained leg of an applicant, improper summons or business trip of Koshlukov, a suddenly ill lawyer, etc.
In May 2025, the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) ruled that the CEM must hold a new election for the eight candidates, and its members can only vote “for” or “against”, with no option for “abstention”. The votes were held in July and, as in 2022, a director general was not elected. The media regulator terminated the procedure and announced a new one. Immediately, four appeals to the Sofia District Administrative Court challenged the CEM's decisions, including the new procedure.
The situation is absurd. Although legal, it leads to institutional stagnation. In a European democracy, one person manages a public media outlet beyond their mandate, thus rendering meaningless the idea of rotation and democratic accountability. The court does not allow a new competition until the legal disputes are resolved. The director of BNT is among the active complainants.
The Law on Radio and Television also preserves the status quo. According to it, the general directors of BNT and BNR “continue to exercise their powers until the new general directors take office”.
Even the chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC), Georgi Cholakov, went on a two-month leave of absence from his duties due to the expired term in the Judiciary Act. He was the temporary head of the SAC after his 7-year mandate expired in November of last year. Cholakov continued to hold the position, since he was not elected as the incumbent. Unlike the competition for the Bulgarian National Television, however, where eight candidates appeared, the Supreme Judicial Council twice suspended the procedure for the election of the chairman of the Supreme Judicial Council due to a lack of nominations.
Unlike Cholakov, however, Borislav Sarafov has begun his fourth year as acting prosecutor general, and there is no prospect of his being replaced soon.
The SJC is not giving up
But the SJC is not the Sarafov-concreted Prosecutorial College of the SJC, which also has a three-year term. Although the members of the regulator are nominations of different political forces and the presidential institution, they manage to form majorities on different topics - and this time they are determined to hold the competition for the Bulgarian National Television. The deadline for submitting candidacies for the position is September 12, the hearings are scheduled for October 14 and 15. The decision on who will be the next director of BNT will be announced on October 16.
The most important thing now is to encourage capable professionals to apply. The mantra “There is no point, everything is predetermined!” only solidifies the status quo. BNT needs not a person who sits in the director’s office and picks up the phone when certain calls are made, but visionaries - with concrete ideas on how to develop public television in the digital age, how to preserve its independence from political pressure and gain more trust. The management concept is not a formality, but a contract with the viewers on what BNT will look like tomorrow: whether it will be alive, curious and free, or will it be a convenient tool for the authorities.
If in a democracy the mandates run but do not end, then democracy is emptied of content. The Bulgarian National Television is too important to be turned into someone's fortress - it is a tribune of society, not a trophy of one person, even if he was the face of Bulgarian democracy in his youth.
*** This comment expresses the personal opinion of the author and may not coincide with the positions of the Bulgarian editorial office and the State Gazette as a whole.