SecondWhen Assen Wassilew said in the middle of last week: “The trend is up and we have a chance to get first, it sounds a bit arrogant.” Four days before the Bulgarian parliamentary election on Sunday, his party “we are continuing to change” still Behind former prime minister Boyko Borrisow’s conservative GERB party, which was accused of corruption and ranked second. This was a success because Vasilev and his friend Kyrill Petkow formed the party in September.
But Vasilev’s self-confidence is not deceiving: on Monday morning, about half of the votes were counted, and his party was far ahead of GERB with 26% of the votes, only about 21%. Together with the other two reform parties and socialists, this should give the extremely poor Bulgarian new groups the opportunity to keep the promises made in their name and make further changes through government actions.
But who is Sofia’s so-called new strongman? Even in the worst coronavirus crisis, only four out of ten Bulgarians went to the ballot box. How did they seize power from scratch in such a short period of time?
Never planned a political career
Wassilew said in a phone call from his company headquarters in Sofia a few days ago that the fact that he and his friend Kyrill Petkow (some call them the “Harvard duo”) would run for the government office had never been planned. It was transformed into a temporary election campaign and party headquarters. Even when President Rumen Radu appointed entrepreneurs as interim ministers in May of this year: Petkov was in charge of the economy and Vasilev was in charge of finances.
Both succeeded and cleared their power. Petkow ventilates the China Development Bank, which gives the money to some big entrepreneurs instead of many small entrepreneurs. In 2013, the then 35-year-old Vasilev served as Minister of Economy, Energy and Tourism for 77 days during the energy crisis, which changed the Ministry of Finance drastically. “All controls have been shut down, and we have found many signs of corruption and misuse of state funds.” The prosecutor was brought in.
Vasilev and his men reformed taxation: “So far, they have been mainly concentrated in small shops, bakeries, barber shops, etc. We have focused our work on a large number of taxpayers who are in arrears. We found out in four months. 2.5 billion levs. “This is equivalent to about 5% of the government’s planned expenditure in 2021. Medical care money has increased, and pensions have also increased. “Many pensioners now live below the poverty line and no longer live below the poverty line,” Vasilev said.
“No corruption, no inefficiency”
The public was surprised by what might happen, and the government’s approval rate was 54%. Petkov and Vasilev took advantage of the wind of public opinion and took pleasure in governing. “In fact, we just want to stay there for a few months, solve the problem, and then start working again,” Vasilev said. That was yesterday. Now, the technocrats who left the government due to the election campaign in mid-September seem to have the electoral mandate to continue to make changes as politicians.
