site.btaMedia Review: October 27

PRESIDENTIAL RUNOFF

With a presidential election runoff due in Bulgaria on November 1, the country's media cover the race in news reports, analyses and interviews. The first round of voting on October 25 determined that incumbent President Iliana Iotova, who won 34.8% of the vote, and former caretaker prime minister Andrey Gurov, with 32.0%, will compete in the second round. Voter turnout last Sunday was around 22%.

24 Chasa says in its print version that if Iotova loses the second round of the election, the government could face a vote of no confidence as she is officially supported in the race by the ruling party, Progressive Bulgaria. The outcome of the election can be decided by GERB, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, and Vazrazhdane, but there is nothing for them in a victory of either Iotova or Gurov, the daily says. Communication expert Diana Damyanova tells the newspaper that the crucial factor is whether Prime Minister and Progressive Bulgaria Chair Rumen Radev will bring part of the electorate who put him in power after the April parliamentary elections back to the ballot boxes. Damyanova predicts that if Gurov fails to become president, he will run for mayor of Sofia. She discusses an idea for Gurov to serve as the new centre of Bulgaria's liberal community, which would displease those who are in that position at present: Ivaylo Mirchev, co-leader of the Yes,Bulgaria, party, and Assen Vassilev, who chairs Continue the Change. In a separate item, the daily says that Iotova and Gurov will hold a debate hosted by Bulgarian National Television on Thursday, which will be aired live.

SegaBG.com runs a story headlined: "Bulgarian Parties Turn Their Back on Expatriates in Turkiye." The website notes that the overall "collapse" of total voter turnout in this election affected the vote among Bulgarians in Turkiye as well. In earlier Bulgarian elections, Turkiye accounted for the main part of the overseas vote, but this time, only 7,810 people voted there. Paradoxically, the electoral administration had reported 13,190 applications by people intending to cast their vote in Bulgaria's southeastern neighbour. In Bulgaria's previous presidential election in November 2021, the first round saw 87,000 people going to the polls in Turkiye, the website recalls. It notes that back then, one of the candidates was supported by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), a party traditionally backed by ethnic Turks in Bulgaria and Turks from Bulgaria resident in Turkiye.

Dnevnik.bg highlights the words of long-serving MRF MP Stanislav Anastasov: "A wonderful day for a hike", which the website says were a clear call to boycott the presidential election. Anastasov said them on voting day last Sunday. The article underlines the fact that voter turnout was record low in MRF strongholds in Bulgaria, particularly in Kardzhali. In the Bulgarian districts where Delyan Peevski's party has influence, Iliana Iotova got the most votes, but her advantage is far from what was expected, says Yordanka Veselinova, who has signed the article. She says that the very low voter turnout among MRF supporters in Bulgaria came as a reaction to arrests of important MRF-backed town mayors in the closing days of the election campaign. But now, the two runoff contestants need to win every vote they can get. With just 42,715 votes separating Iotova's score from Gurov's, the stakes are high.

Bulgarian National Radio has interviewed Elisaveta Petrusheva, who chairs a section election commission in Sofia. She said that voting machines are a wonderful, easy-to-use and secure method of conducting an election, ensuring that every vote is registered in the exact way that it was cast. Machine voting has been the prevalent method in the current election, the other being paper ballots.

POLITICS

The government is having a tough time: in less than six months since it took office, the country has seen three execution-style murders of influential businessmen, MediaPool.bg says. The website notes that the grim statistics are hardly a direct result of the incumbents' policies, but in Bulgarian political reality, such facts are inevitably debited to those in power. The author of the article, Samuil Dimitrov, draws attention to the apparent inclination of Prime Minister Rumen Radev to link conventional violent acts to the government's uncompromising war against the oligarchy. Apparently, Radev's take on the matter is that the Bulgarian oligarchy has become so short of resources that it has resorted to killing its collaborators over small sums of money from illegal betting operations, Dimitrov comments. He says it is very convenient to ascribe every major crime to an abstract and nameless "oligarchy" when you need a cheap explanation for gloomy statistics.

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Hristijan Pendikov, who was secretary of the now-deregistered King Boris III Bulgarian Cultural Club in Ohrid, North Macedonia, was interviewed by bTV on Tuesday morning, five days after the Basic Court in Ohrid acquitted two men of a severe beating inflicted on him in 2023. Pendikov said in the interview that Bulgarians in North Macedonia are under constant pressure. "The authorities are mean to everyone who identifies themselves as Bulgarian," he said.

ECONOMY & HEALTH

Second-pension money will be invested in the building of roads, which will bring profit for the pension account holders, Trud (print) says in its leading story, adding that this is part of the government's strategy for Bulgaria's economic development. The daily quotes Prime Minister Rumen Radev as saying at the Sofia Economic Forum that the government will revise the approach to building transport and energy infrastructure. He said that according to an analysis, if public money is the only funding source, a substantial improvement of the country's infrastructure will take 50 years. Therefore, the authorities will use public-private partnerships to mobilize private capital.

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The Vertical Gas Corridor is a political project which is difficult to implement and offers dubious benefit for Bulgaria, Trud (print) says in an analysis. The corridor will run from Greece through Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova and Ukraine, with expanding branches into Hungary, Slovakia and the Western Balkans. The author of the article, Anton Gitsov, says that Bulgaria's President Iliana Iotova, speaking in the Armenian capital Yerevan on June 4, and Prime Minister Rumen Radev, talking with the Ukrainian President's Chief of Staff Kyrylo Budanov in Sofia on October 8, were both optimistic about the project and Bulgaria's participation in it. The two leaders are obviously unfamiliar with the real economic and political aspects of the initiative, the author says.

Discussing who stands to gain from the Vertical Gas Corridor, Gitsov says that it will provide the only supply route for liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States to Southeastern Europe. Greece, with its existing infrastructure, holds a key position in this geopolitical project, while Ukraine can potentially play a key role in distributing natural gas to Europe. Russia is on the losing side, given that the Vertical Gas Corridor is an instrument for Europe's independence from Russian energy. The project can be disadvantageous to Turkiye as well, because it will diminish the role of the Turkish Stream gas pipeline.

Bulgaria is a very active participant in this undertaking as the country expects to derive much benefit, the analyst says. The assumption is that domestic demand for natural gas will be satisfied with LNG deliveries from the United States. But the facts suggest otherwise, Gitsov says. He quotes Energy Minister Iva Petrova as stating in October: "Building the infrastructure is just the first step. The real use of the Vertical Gas Corridor will depend on the extent to which it will create conditions for liquidity, tradability, diversification of supplies and rapid reaction to market changes." The analyst sees a very serious problem transpiring from Petrova's remark. The Bulgarian authorities have committed considerable financial resources to a political project unsupported by an analysis and an assessment of the likely economic impact of the country's participation. Gitsov warns that the gas which will be carried through the corridor will be much more expensive. The project will make Bulgaria's losses from the deal with Turkiye's BOTAS irrecoverable as Bulgaria will be unable to receive deliveries via the Turkish terminal. (The analysis is to be continued in the next Trud issue.)

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The need to protect the mental health and the well-being of medical professionals was discussed on Tuesday morning in a Bulgarian National Radio interview with Dr Nedelcho Totev, who chairs the Association of Municipal Hospitals in Bulgaria. Totev said: "We are all in a permanent, constant state of stress, because going to work every day, our first thought is the hope to be spared the sight of a fellow staff member in front of our office – if someone is there, it can't be good – they are either quitting or going to complain about something that will keep them off work for a certain period of time, which means other colleagues will be burdened, and the situation is carried over from one person to another – and so, saving someone from burnout causes two other people to risk getting into the same situation."