Bulgaria Among EU Leaders in Female Representation in Science and Engineering
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As EU leaders assemblе in Brussels to decide on the fate of the common currency and the European Union itself, the Bulgarian Parliament writhes in the pangs of giving birth to the latest progeny of FinMin Simeon Djankov.
I will not linger on the specifics of Bulgaria’s draft state budget for 2012, as they are clear. The budget is a replica to the one for 2011, which means spending cuts that doom Bulgaria to strategic underdevelopment, not a stimulus for the frozen economy, an overly optimistic growth forecast, and happy spending from the country’s shrunken fiscal reserve (largely to sponsor road construction companies).
In his public appearances, Minister Djankov has his mind fixated on the fetish of keeping a budget deficit well below the required 3%, to the extent that he appears to think that this is the sole official intent and purpose of a country’s budgeting policy.
But all that is not my point here. My point is – the horridly undemocratic, non-transparent, unpredictable budgeting procedure, adopted by Bulgarian PM Boyko Borisov’s cabinet, which Djankov has the honor to vice-chair.
What should strike any civilized reader is the fact that a country’s state budget for next year is being voted by PMs as late as the second week of December, rushed into extraordinary parliamentary sittings so as to evade the meager possibility of a meaningful debate.
All the more that the very framework for this budget was unveiled by the Borisov cabinet as late as end of October, just after the first round of presidential and municipal elections in Bulgaria.
All the more that before elections, the Borisov cabinet had lied in writing to segments of Bulgarian society, e.g. trade unions and farmers, making agreements that it will not go for spending cuts that it apparently intended to execute anyhow.
Democracy and transparency have become empty words. Their lasting importance however shines out in cases such as this one. A transparent, democratically controlled rule means that citizens possess tools to censure their incompetent or lying rules. Such tools are not forthcoming in Bulgaria.
If we look at history, there are not many cases in which relations between Bulgaria and Russia at the state level were as bad as they are at the moment.
The term “Iron Curtain” was not coined by Winston Churchill, but it was he who turned it into one of the symbols of the latter part of the twentieth century by using it in his famous Fulton speech of 1946.
Hardly anything could be said in defense of the new government's ideological profile, which is quite blurry; at the same time much can be disputed about its future "pro-European" stance.
Look who is lurking again behind the corner – the tandem of Advent International and Deutsche Bank, respectively the buyer of the Bulgarian Telecom Company in 2004 and the advisor of the Bulgarian government in the sweetest deal of the past decade, seem t
We have seen many times this circus which is being played out during the entire week and it only shows one thing - there is no need of a caretaker government in Bulgaria.
You have certainly noticed how many times President Rosen Plevneliev used the phrase “a broad-minded person” referring to almost every member of his caretaker government.
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