The more or less spontaneous demonstrations began last week over the rapidly escalating price of electricity. They have grown daily to tens of thousands in the capital of Sofia and many other cities.
While utility rates triggered the passive-aggressive burst among voters, the demonstrations were quickly understood to be repudiation of the very nature of governance since the Soviets abandoned Bulgaria.
When asked, most Bulgarians describe their government as operated solely for the benefit of oligarchs and mafia. This sentiment, heard in chants during demonstrations, is pervasive regardless of whether one voted for or against the ruling party, GERB.
Ironically, ruling party officials now say that GERB supports the protesters (while also supporting the prime minister, but not the cabinet members he just fired). And one protest leader, Daniela Pelovsk, today claimed their cause is not tied to any party or candidate, but to the country's economic stagnation. As I write, many other protest leaders have just repudiated her, calling her a shill for Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.
Follow The Money
Yesterday Borisov fired Finance Minister Simeon Djankov, a former World Bank official who oversaw a tight national budget that impressed bond rating agencies but did little to address infrastructure and the poverty that envelops about 22 percent* of the Bulgarian population. Bulgarians generally believe that their taxes or the European Union or the proceeds from nationalized companies have already paid for highways and the national electric grid and other essential projects, which often seem incomplete or phantoms.
Global media have barely noticed the crisis, having long ago closed most international bureaus. Business wires finally carried stories-- after it became clear that investors in Bulgarian utilities now owned by publicly-held foreign companies might lose money in any wave of re-nationalization.
I-95 Blocked
Foreign editors overlooked the fact that when protesters blocked the major north-south European highway from Romania to Greece for two hours Sunday, it was the equivalent of thousands of New Yorkers closing Interstate Highway 95 to traffic between Boston and Washington. (Bulgaria's population of seven million is roughly that of New York City, eight million.)
CNN no doubt will arrive once the protesters realize they must letter their signs in English, rather than Cyrillic Bulgarian. For local journalists, it was an education. Major Bulgarian media are routinely derided and ignored as tools of the political class. But TV street reporters were suddenly emancipated by the necessity of accurately describing live-to-air images of mostly peaceful protesters marching for hours over several days.
Judging from these images, police in handsome full riot control costume were restrained, though near Parliament they lacked training or discipline and occasionally broke ranks to try to detain someone they did not like. Elsewhere, when someone rolled a plastic garbage dumpster towards a line of police, their commander simply raised a boot to stop it, a common sense solution that put neither his men nor the public at risk.
Polenta Does Not Explode
Bulgarians excuse their lack of political initiative and efficacy as a reflection of a "survivor" culture developed over centuries of oppression by the Ottoman Empire, the Soviets, etc. One local commentator sought to explain this through a Balkan expression of the slow-burn, "Polenta does not explode."
It remains to be seen how this polenta will be served.
_________________________________________
*This estimate of the extent of poverty in Bulgaria has been revised from the original post to reflect official statistics from the country's National Statistical Institute, NSI.
No comments:
Post a Comment