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Southeast Europe
March 9, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 15
Borissov's unsolvable puzzle
Denitsa Koseva in Sofia
Boyko Borissov is facing challenging times in his third stint as prime minister as he needs to satisfy the demands of his highly unstable coalition part- ners in order to stay on top of domestic politics, while at the same time attempting to persuade Western European leaders that Bulgaria is good enough for the EU’s A league and thereby se- cure entry to the Schengen and Eurozone waiting rooms. And he needs to do this while firefighting the new and bigger scandals that erupt in Bul- garia almost every day.
The country assumed the rotational EU Council chairmanship in January and since then, despite Borissov’s enormous efforts to persuade the EU that his government is stable and that problems are being resolved and key reforms implemented, several big scandals have marred Sofia’s image.
The latest and most explosive concerns the high- ly controversial sale of Czech energy company CEZ’s assets in Bulgaria to an unknown local firm. It has already claimed one victim; Energy Minister Temenuzhka Petkova was advised by Bo- rissov to resign over her friendship with the firm’s owner, although both Borissov and Petkova claim she was not involved in the deal in any way.
Borissov was also not formally connected to the deal but the confusion it has triggered in Sofia has forced him to backtrack on his initial statement that it was a deal between two private companies
Boyko Borissov is the first politician to become Bulgaria's premier more than once in the post-communist era.
where the state cannot do anything. Instead, he has gone full throttle in the opposite direction, putting all possible state authorities into action and ordering a full investigation of the deal. He then went even further, pledging on February 27 that the government will immediately draft legis- lation that will retroactively stop the sale.
Despite these efforts, the scandal around the sale of CEZ’s assets is being used by all Borissov’s op- ponents to increase their support at his expense.
Analysts believe that the veteran politician — Bor- rissov is the first to hold the Bulgarian premier- ship more than once in the post-communist era — might once again trigger early elections to ei- ther avoid total collapse of his political support or (if things start to go better) to allow him to benefit from possible momentum gained during the EU Council chairmanship.
Borissov said on February 27 that his government would not resign over the CEZ scandal, but he
is known for his unpredictability and in the past has used early elections as a tool to either avoid facing a total collapse in popular support for his ruling centre-right Citizens for European Develop- ment of Bulgaria (GERB), or to try to secure more votes.
With his junior coalition partner the far-right Unit- ed Patriots increasingly riven by internal conflicts,