Bulgaria’s Political Demise

Since the beginning of June 2013 thousands of Bulgarian citizens have been protesting on their parliament, demanding that Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski resign from his seat. This uprising started when Oresharski appointed Delyan Peevski as the head of the Bulgarian Secret Service. The quarrel with Peevski is that his family owns many of the nation’s top newspapers, and media sources. It is believed that such a high ranking official should not have influence over the nation’s primary media sources, because this can lead to falsely reported information and deceptive tactics from the government. For this reason the Bulgarian citizens saw Peevski as dangerous and took his appointing as a sign that their entire government was corrupt and lacked credibility. Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski quickly noticed that Peevski was not approved by the public and relieved him of his position (Article released when Peevski's seat was revoked), but it was too late, the public was already exposed to the notion that their government was corrupt. The citizens of Bulgaria began to surround the parliament and demand for the Prime Minister’s resignation ( Short article and video expressing the protests on parliament).

As discussed in class, to assure political survival a leader must please his/her selectorate and more specifically his/her winning coalition. The Bulgarian political system is a parliamentary representative democratic republic which means there is a larger winning coalition and that to stay in power, Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski, should be doing what the people ask of him, or at very least he should be attempting to quell the uproar and to come to some mutual agreement on the matter. Instead however, Oresharski and the rest of the Bulgarian government are acting very uncharacteristic as leaders of a democratic republic who want to stay in power. They are simply attempting to ignore the protesters and carry on business as usual. Their attention is primarily being focused on the county’s powerful actors which are mainly comprised of wealthy bankers and construction companies. The government is acting as if their winning coalition is very small and made up similar to an oligarchy rather than a democratic republic. This is an interesting tactic because, when not meeting the needs of the people, leaders will be removed from office; however, if the government is putting its focus on the wealthy players rather than its voters than these signs point toward a corrupted government. This is such because, if it remains true that leaders want to stay in power, than all of their focus should go towards who is keeping them in their seats. If the government is taking care of the wealthy and powerful players while they ignore the citizen majority than clearly there is an incentive given to the government in order to do this; or is it possible that the government and Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski are not corrupt but rather have simply come to the realization that their political careers are over no matter what they tell the public, incentivizing them to gain powerful friends while they still can, in preparation for what comes after their political lives? 

**Short article and video explaining the entire situation from citizen standpoints**