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In the last few days, Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov has had the chance of giving us a fresh display of his manners of being obsequious to renowned international leaders while keeping a demeaning tone towards his closest political associates.
At the Wednesday visit of Luxembourg PM and Eurozone President Jean-Claude Juncker to Bulgaria, PM Borisov did not hide his extreme joy at having had the chance to converse with a person so powerful.
A beaming Borisov thanked for what must have been – if we are to believe him – long years of deep and fatherly counsel for the Bulgarian center-right leader from his fellow EPP colleague and top-level European politician.
"Jean-Claude Juncker has a rich career and every European politician can envy him for being the longest-serving PM in Europe," pronounced his Bulgarian counterpart, who has not hidden that his prime ministerial ambitions reach well beyond the end of his mandate in 2013.
At the same time, the Sunday nomination of Borisov's highly popular Minister of Regional Development Rosen Plevneliev as the presidential candidate of the GERB party Borisov chairs, provided an occasion for Borisov to show who's the boss in Bulgaria.
Apart from making the needed emphatic remarks about the winning nature of Plevneliev's candidacy and the hard-working and self-standing character of latter, Borisov hastened – purposefully or not, it remains to be determined – to heap comments that sometimes cross the barrier with the insulting.
Borisov's candidacy of choice would rather be not Plevneliev, but Borisov's right hand, Minister of Interior Tsvetan Tsvetanov. Plevneliev himself was told he had to be GERB's presidential nominee some months ago "on a road to Pernik," an order that was confirmed to him just an hour before officially presenting his candidacy.
Moreover, Plevneliev's campaign video was especially ill made, yet he did not need campaign videos anyway, being backed by the force that is GERB – and, presumably, Borisov himself.
So you have it – Borisov is spending much of his time trying to make Bulgarians believe that his closest home associates are nothing, that he is alpha and omega in Bulgaria, and that he drinks his morning coffee with the likes of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and evening rakia with the likes of French President Nicolas Sarkozy.
And, when needed, he bows down deeply to those international luminaries.
Oh wait, there is a third type of case. In April Bulgaria's PM travelled to Croatia, apparently to inform counterpart Jadranka Kosor that her country fares much, much worse than Bulgaria. Call that diplomatic finesse.
With what seems to be Plevneliev's almost certain win at the October 23 presidential elections, the only good thing about Borisov's erratic behavior might be a possible exasperation and eventual alienation on the part of his erstwhile ally.
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