The week: The worst believers in the world, A historical debacle, John Malkovich enrages Bulgarian writers

So why is it that only 1 in 10 people believes in the most powerful collective instrument for societal change in a supposedly 30-year old-democracy?

The interesting thing about this dismal result is that obviously no group and no political party have been spared. I haven't seen the detailed data, but it seems that the majority of Bulgarians in every electoral grouping are disappointed. Most of the people, regardless of their voting preference, don't believe elections work. How can it be that winners and losers alike hate the system?

My humble take on this is that it stems from years of political engineering, vote-buying and populism. But I also believe this result is the outcome of a well-designed and executed campaign to disappoint and disgust the normal voters. Because you see, in a democracy, even a flawed one, the only way to keep power forever is either to satisfy the majority or to make it feel both disgusted and helpless. The first will make them vote for you. The second will keep them from voting for anyone.

So if you've seen that no matter how you vote, the decision-makers don't change, that even nation-wide protests can't bring about the end of corruption, or when you vote for the winner but still know the system is rigged, then you stop believing in elections. Being helpless in an autocracy is one thing. Being helpless in a supposed democracy seems even worse for the motivation.

Yes, having elections 7 times in a row, or having the most brutal power-broker openly buying votes and bullying others into submission adds to the feeling.

But since we're a business newsletter, here are a few, say, business-questions to ponder.

How do you invite foreign investors to the world's most politically fraught country? How do you make anyone stay in a place where only 17% of the people believe in the judicial system? How much of this blame should be borne by businesses who helped political brokers bully and buy voters with cheap promises?

And last, but not least, how long will this slide continue? There is no way for a system with such low levels of confidence to survive for long. The whole thing is bound to implode. And we just might be sleepwalking into it.

This newspaper is helped by

@Martin Dimitrov, Monika Varbanova

Politics this week:

Seven parties will enter the 51st National Assembly, according to an Alpha Research poll conducted on 20-23 October 20. According to the polling agency, GERB will win the parliamentary vote convincingly, with 26.5% of those who have firmly decided to go to the polls. 14.9% say they will cast a ballot for the liberal WCC-DB coalition, while the radical Russophiles from Vazrazhdane will run a close third with 14.2%.

Turkish corruption battle rages on

The next three parties are only 0.7 percentage points apart, making the fight for fourth place unpredictable right up to the wire. The Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (ARF) of the honorary chairman of the MRF Ahmed Dogan is expected to hold fourth place with 7.9% of the vote, while the separatists from MRF-New Beginning of mogul Delyan Peevski will win 7.4% of the vote.

The lower end

At the bottom end of the poll there are two more parties that are expected to enter the next parliament with a great degree of certainty - BSP with 7.2% of the vote and TISP with 6.1%. The expected low turnout of under 30% of the vote might mean that, in the end, more factions might make it in, making the parliament the most fragmented it has ever been in the modern history of the country.

Explainer: The Historic Park debacle

That's the rage of the week, but you would be forgiven if you're not familiar with the story so here's a recap. The man behind the newest political party in Bulgaria - Greatness (Velichie), is also the mastermind of a major Ponzi scheme. Ivelin Mihaylov has for years been busy enlarging his empire, situated near Varna around a newly built Historical park, designed to replicate the Bulgarian past. The whole thing smells like a cult, feels like a financial pyramid, and sucks plenty of people in (and also has Russian ties).

The movie

This week, a popular Youtuber called Lyubomir Zhechev premiered a movie about this, called "Historical Park - The Kingdom of the Liberator" (go and watch it if it's still available). The movie is based on (among other things) plenty of Capital investigations and examines allegations against the park.

For their part, Mihailov et al. continue to claim that their activities are entirely legal and that they are victims of repression. In the days before the film's premiere, representatives of the park asked Zhechev to stop the screening because they were withdrawing their permission to participate in it. In the end, the film made five screenings before it appeared on the internet and quickly gathered tens of thousands of views.

The police screw-up

And while this was happening, the movie was taken down several times for unknown reasons, and Economic Police started collecting information from people who bought tickets. The reason? People were deceived because they actually wanted to invest or donate to the park, say the police.

Come to think of it, it would only be fitting if the financial authorities here were actively helping a scam, rather than try to stop it.

Economy:

The caretaker government decided, days before the elections, to donate 30 mln. levs to the completion of Varna stadium. Under the sudden decision, the state will enter into a public-private partnership with Chimimport group, where it will hold the minority share of 35% (now owned by Varna municipality), if the private investor puts another 50+ million towards the stadium. This is a very sudden twist. Varna stadium has been in the works for 20 years, and the PPP has stalled. No explanation was given for this, so we're left with the most obvious answer: Boyko Borissov lost Varna and wants it back, together with its most powerful financial conglomerate, and the caretaker government obliges.

Christmas arrived early vol. 2

The Road Agency suddenly announced a gigantic procurement of 2.25 bln. levs for road maintenance. The rules are slightly changed so they allow for a bit more competition, but the end result will be that the same several companies will get most of that money. The tender was started without a public announcement, probably because, as one banker used to say "big money loves quiet".

Figures

1,077 leva

Will be the minimum wage from next year. It will thus increase by 15.4% compared to the current figure, after it was increased by nearly 20% at the beginning of 2024.

7%

The average increase of salaries in Bulgaria in 2024 according to the Total Remuneration Survey (TRS Bulgaria) conducted by Mercer Marsh Benefits.

26%

The annual growth in housing loans in Bulgaria as of September 2024, which has reached a new record volume - 23.6 billion levs, despite attempts by the National Bank to limit lending.

Business:

Hype

The Ruse-based software developers of a restaurant management platform expect to double their turnover from 1 million levs in 2023 to 2 million levs this year due to the expansion of the business both in Bulgaria, where the software is already in use in 170 towns and has 1,200 active users, and abroad, where the company has entered the Swiss, Portuguese and Spanish markets.

M&A

Ontotoext

The Bulgarian software company has acquired 100% of the Austrian Semantic Web Company (SWC) in order to sharply increase its capacity to work on projects supporting the development of artificial intelligence (AI) products. The two companies will merge their operations, operating under the Graphwise brand, but they will retain their legal entities.

Innovation

Devnya Cement Plant

In the last call of the European Innovation Fund, the plant won a 190 million euro project for carbon capture and storage. The ANRAV project aims to be the first complete carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) value chain project in Eastern Europe. It will link CO2 capture facilities at the Devnya Cement Plant in Bulgaria, a subsidiary of Heidelberg Materials, with CO2 storage in a depleted gas field in the Black Sea, through an onshore and offshore pipeline system.

Brussels

#EU budget - The European Parliament in Strasbourg voted this Wednesday on next year's EU budget with over 1 billion euros on top of the Commission's proposal.

Watch out for:

Maria Tsantsarova

The host of the morning show of bTV became the object of a vicious pre-elections attack by several radical politicians, who got offended by her blunt questions. Those included Vazrazhdane leader Kostadin Kostadinov who accused her of "bringing up personal details" because of her investigation into him and other leaders of the party being vaccinated while preaching against vaccines.

Date:

April 2025

Is when the low-cost Transavia will begin flying from Paris to Sofia.

Place:

Greenville, South Carolina

The location where the first F-16 Block 70 fighter jet, designated for the Bulgarian Air Force, was successfully tested in flight on 22 October, the Ministry of Defense announced with a video. The news that the delayed Bulgarian fighters are closer to completion may be welcome, but this does not mean that the army is ready to exploit them - check out our analysis of the state of repair of the Graf Ignatievo airbase, which is supposed to host the new jets by next year.

Zen of the week

The Bulgarian Writer's Union Called for John Malkovich's play in the National Theatre, scheduled for 7, 8 and 9th of November, to be canceled. The reason is that according to the Union, the chosen script - George Bernard Shaw's "Arms and the Man" is "anti-Bulgarian". The play is set at the end of the Serbo-Bulgarian war, in which Bulgaria defends its national unity (making Plovdiv, where I currently write this, part of Bulgaria again). It aims to describe the war as a whole as a pointless endeavor consuming human life. The Bulgarian Writers Union, however, deems using Bulgarian soldiers to show that unacceptable. A fitting end to an absurd week, I guess.