GERB Govt Broke the Back of Bulgarian Middle Class - Rightist Opposition

Domestic | May 9, 2011, Monday // 15:44|  views

DSB officials Proshko Proshkov (left) and Veselin Metodiev (right) said that their party would announce its final nomination for Sofia Mayor on May 15. Photo by BGNES.

Bulgaria's ruling center-right party GERB has shattered the middle class in Bulgaria, according to key representatives of the rightist opposition party Democrats for Strong Bulgaria (DSB).

"In the past two years of GERB's term in office, Bulgaria has been plagued by monopolistic scheming and favoring of oligarchs , which have broken the back of the middle class in the country, leaving small and medium-sized enterprises in dire straits and dramatically decreasing the standard of living of the population," said Proshko Proshkov from DSB, current mayor of the Lozenets quarter in Sofia.

At the upcoming meeting on May 15, the DSB party will pick either Proshko Proshkov or Petar Moskov as a representative at the internal elections for a right-wing Sofia mayor nominee.

The DSB party led by former Bulgarian Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, who ruled in 1997-2001, is part of the rightist Blue Coalition together with the Union of Democratic Forces (UDF). Both DSB and UDF are descendants of the original UDF, the emblematic Bulgarian pro-democracy right-wing party of the 1990s. The Blue Coalition has a total of 15 MPs in the 240-member Parliament.

"The Sofia Municipality resembles a puppet-like projection of the state- a boiling cauldron of administrative chaos and the most inefficient municipal council that Sofia has ever known", Proshkov pointed out in his devastating criticism of the Borisov government.

"The territory surrounding this cauldron, however, has been thoroughly marked by corporate interests", he added, explaining his motives to accept the Sofia mayor nomination.

"When he came to power, Borisov pledged that he would not follow the three-way coalition's manner of making last-minute political maneuvers in election time. GERB is afraid to show its candidates and is playing for time. It will most probably fut forward yet another marionette", Proshkov declared. "Unlike GERB, we will nominate authentic leaders and politicians who are fighting for people's trust".

The Blue Coalition is set to stage primaries to select its joint candidates for the Bulgarian presidential and local elections in the fall of 2011. Rumen Hristov from UDF will face Svetoslav Malinov from DSB for the presidential nomination of the Coalition.

"There will be around 600 polling stations for the preliminary elections for right-wing presidential and mayoral nominees but the locations are yet to be specified," informed Veselin Metodiev, Chairman of DSB's Election Headquarters.

The campaign surrounding the preliminary elections will be paid for from the parties' subsidies, Metodiev explained. He could not name a concrete day of the elections.

"I will accept nothing less than first place in the mayoral elections in Sofia", Proshkov commented, stating that he recognizes BSP and GERB as his main rivals.

As the Borisov Cabinet of the GERB party took over in 2009, the Blue Coalition supported it in principle, mostly because GERB, DSB, and UDF are all members of the European People's Party; subsequently, however, the Blue Coalition grew increasingly critical of GERB's rule and emerged as a rightist opposition, with the nationalist party Ataka remaining the only informal partner of GERB.

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Tags: DSB, Proshko Proshkov, Veselin Metodiev, UDF, right-wing, right-wing Blue Coalition, GERB, Svetoslav Malinov, Rumen Hristov, small and medium enterprises

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