In the midst of earthquakes, floods, and the latest deadly ammo depot chain explosion, the newly-released poll of the National Center for Study of Public Opinion (NZIOM) went almost unnoticed despite, to put it mildly, some quite strange results.

According to the poll, the Mayor of Bulgaria's capital Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova, has emerged ahead in approval ratings, beating Prime Minister, Boyko Borisov, and President, Rosen Plevneliev.

Fandakova is now the country's most trusted politician. A mindboggling outcome, considering the long-lasting, still-unresolved, and recently multiplied problems of the capital city – aggressive packs of stray dogs attacking people and mauling to his demise an elderly professor, perhaps the most prominent Bulgarian in the US, with a brilliant Columbia University, Wall Street and State Department career, who decided to spent his retirement back home; piles of dirty, never removed snow on side streets, and not only side streets, all winter long, potholes, strewn trash and so on, and so on.

Interior Minister, Tsvetan Tsvetanov, is the Minister with the highest approval ratings among his colleagues, while the police are the most trusted institution in the country. A Minister, who has become the laughing stock over his use of Bulgarian language, and who is known for his aggression, is the least of the issues that make the ranking bizarre. Maybe some people like such character treats... Aggression, after all, is often confused with courage and decisiveness.

But the police, with scores of high-profile special ops and arrests, advertised as Hollywood trailers, with most ending either botched or with the scary criminals walking out of jail or vanishing out of the country, all escaping justice either way? The police, not all, but most, who make us wait for them for hours to show up after a home or a street robbery, a car theft, a fender-bender, among others? The police who often never even come? The police, who if they materialize, tell you than nothing can be done? The police, who leave a huge number of these crimes unresolved for good? The rude ones? The ones asking for bribes?

On one side we have a well-mannered and polite woman, on the other – a bunch of aggressive and undereducated individuals. The common denominator – lack of significant results and frequent media appearances...

Many suspect that NZIOM is twisting the results – it is after all THE State polling agency... This is one possible explanation. But there are others as well – either Bulgarians pick their most popular and trusted among the most visible or simply the pool of choices is way too narrow...

Oh, the unbearable hardship of the limited choice.

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