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Bulgarian Parliament Accepts Government’s Resignation
Resignation Fails to Soothe Bulgarians
(1 day later)
SOFIA, Bulgaria — The Bulgarian Parliament voted on Thursday to accept the government’s resignation after a week of mass protests and bloody clashes with the police.
SOFIA, Bulgaria — The Bulgarian government tried to defuse mounting public anger by giving up power, but the Parliament’s vote to accept the resignation of the prime minister and his cabinet on Thursday did little to calm discontent over rising prices and falling standards of living or to mend political divisions that have plagued Bulgaria since the fall of Communism more than 20 years ago.
The vote was 209 to 5, with one abstention. Prime Minister Boiko Borisov and his cabinet officials will remain in their posts until an interim government is appointed by President Rosen Plevneliev. New elections are expected in April or May.
The vote to accept the resignation of Prime Minister Boiko Borisov and his ministers was overwhelming — 209 to 5, with one abstention — but the path to fresh elections, now expected in April or May, remained fraught.
During the debate, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, the interior minister, said the resignation was in the best interest of Bulgaria.
The ministers will stay on as caretakers until President Rosen Plevneliev appoints an interim government, perhaps as early as next week.
“Most Bulgarian citizens don’t want violence on the streets,” he said. “Bulgarian citizens absolutely do not support those who want to destabilize the country.”
Large protests across Bulgaria have brought hundreds of thousands of people on to the streets in the past 10 days, and led to clashes with the police in Sofia on Tuesday. Mr. Borisov swiftly offered his resignation as politicians on all sides decried the violence.
Opposition parties accused the government of corruption, economic mismanagement and cronyism.
Although criminal mafias that appeared post-Communism have a history of internecine killings, political violence has been rare in Bulgaria, even in 1989, when fellow Communists ousted a longtime dictator, Todor Zhivkov. Bulgarians recoiled at the 1990s wars in the former Yugoslavia and the violence that convulsed Romania when it overthrew its dictator, Nicolae Ceausescu.
The week of political chaos, nationwide protests and political maneuvers by opposition parties resulted in Mr. Borisov’s announcing his resignation Wednesday after violent clashes between the police and protesters.
“We have always been people of order,” Mr. Borisov told deputies in Parliament shortly after the vote Thursday. “Anyone who would ever try do anything with public order would never be accepted as one of our sympathizers, and we would always consider him as a provocateur.”
Despite the vote, around 1,000 supporters of Mr. Borisov, largely retirees, stood outside the Parliament building. Many waved the flag of Mr. Borisov’s political party and chanted, “We don’t want a resignation” and “Boiko is No. 1!”
“Bulgarian citizens,” said the departing interior minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, “absolutely do not support those who want to destabilize the country.”
The protests — the biggest in at least 15 years — were set off by electricity price increases and corruption scandals, including one over the nominee to head the state electricity regulatory commission, which sets rates. She was accused of selling cigarettes illegally online and her nomination was later withdrawn.
The prime minister, a burly former karate champion and head of a security firm, thanked the deputies for their vote before leaving the legislature building and trying to persuade a crowd of several hundred of his supporters to go home.
Tempers were inflamed further when Bulgaria’s finance minister, Simeon Djankov, the architect of painful fiscal probity, stepped down on Monday. Rather than allaying anger, analysts said, the resignation was greeted by the public as an admission that the government’s economic policies had not worked.
After the vote, Mr. Plevneliev said at a news conference broadcast live on television, “In a crisis situation, political parties and politicians are the ones who need to show statesmanly behavior.”
Tens of thousands of Bulgarians took to the streets across the country to protest. Some yelled “Mafia!” Others burned their utility bills.
“The most important thing now is not to threaten civil peace, the rule of law and our democratic order,” he said.
Though the country’s fiscal prudence has helped it avoid having to seek an international bailout like Hungary or Romania, analysts said, rising unemployment and weak growth, coupled with wage and pension freezes and tax increases, have mobilized the country’s increasingly disgruntled middle class, who felt themselves squeezed during the financial crisis.
While some protesters suggested changing the Constitution to prevent monopolies like those in electricity distribution, which they accuse of raising rates, Mr. Plevneliev said that only policies could prevent monopolies and that they must come from elected legislators and a government.
Daniel Smilov, program director at the Center for Liberal Strategies, a political research organization in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, said Bulgarians were disillusioned that the overthrow of Communism in 1989 and the country’s subsequent democratization had not delivered the expected prosperity.
Mr. Tsvetanov accused opposition parties of fomenting the chaos. The opposition, in turn, accused the government of corruption, economic mismanagement and cronyism.
Bulgaria has struggled to shed a reputation for lawlessness and corruption. It remains poor, with an average monthly wage of just $480, the lowest in the European Union.
Current polls suggest that the Socialists, now the biggest opposition party, will do well in elections. But the vote is distant enough, and the current protests so apparently spontaneous, that predictions are difficult and uncertain.
“What we are seeing is the result of a general distrust in government and the political system,” said Mr. Smilov, noting that protests had engulfed wealthy as well as poorer regions of the country. “These are not the bottom layers of society, but people in the middle strata who have been hit hardest by the financial crisis. They fear they are losing their status, and they might become poor very fast.”
Most in the pro-Borisov crowd outside Parliament were retirees, waving his party flag but denying that they had been sent there by party operatives. Farmers driving five tractors and a truck with live pigs joined them.
Trying to appease the protesters, the prime minister said on Tuesday that the license of the Czech utility CEZ, which provides power to many residential customers in Bulgaria, would be withdrawn. Mr. Borisov cited beatings of protesters Tuesday by the police as one reason.
“There is no other Bulgarian politician these last 23 years who has this level of support from the people,” said one protester, Stefka Tsankova. “Boiko Borisov is loved.”
“Every drop of blood for us is a stain,” he said. “I can’t look at a Parliament surrounded by barricades, that’s not our goal, neither our approach, if we have to protect ourselves from the people.”
The protests are economic, not political, she added. “People are angry because bills are high and salaries are low.”
Mr. Smilov said that after Parliament accepted the government’s resignation, Mr. Plevneliev would appoint a caretaker government. Mr. Borisov said his party would not participate in an interim government.
Ivan Stoyanov, 67, waved dismissively at the Parliament building. “They all deserve the guillotine,” he said — with the exception of Mr. Borisov.
Mr. Borisov’s resignation could signal the political demise of one of the country’s most colorful political figures. A former karate instructor, bodyguard, fireman and mayor of Sofia with a shaved head and a talk-tough approach, Mr. Borisov was once viewed as being so invincible that Bulgarians called him “Batman.”
“Mr. Borisov is the best leader Bulgaria has had until now,” he said. “There is no way he could have undone all the damage which has been done to the country in the last three and a half years.”
As the owner of a private security company, he provided security services for Todor Zhivkov, the former Communist leader of Bulgaria. Mr. Borisov was then the personal bodyguard for Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the child czar of Bulgaria in the 1940s, who returned from exile to be elected prime minister in 2001.
Svetoslav Iliev, 38, a lawyer, expressed fear of the Socialists, whose origins lie in the former Communist Party. “I support the government because I don’t want the Communists to come to power,” he said. “It’s a threat to democracy.”
Mr. Borisov rose to oversee the police at the Interior Ministry, before being elected mayor of Sofia and then becoming prime minister in 2009.
Protesters opposed to the electricity price rises vowed to continue their demonstrations, including nationwide rallies on Sunday.
“Mr. Borisov is a typical populist leader who came to power promising to take revenge against the transition on behalf of the poor,” says Andrei Raichev, a political analyst at Gallup International in Sofia. “Now the people realize that they were lied to.”
Mr. Raichev said that no one could predict how the public would react to the resignation. “We could even reach the absurd situation that the protests continue against no one,” he said, “which means that they are against everyone.”
Matthew Brunwasser reported from Sofia, and Dan Bilefsky from Paris.
