Ruin

My district is called Zaharna Fabrika, which means Sugar Factory. It was named after the first sugar factory in Bulgaria, built in 1898 by the Belgian Solvay company. At that time, it was located at a railway crossing 4 km away from the city of Sofia. The city grew and eventually reached the factory. In the early 1940s, the district was built as accommodation complex for the factory workers.

The sugar factory itself stopped work decades ago. I have never seen it working, but have always liked the simple beauty of its buildings. It had the status of a cultural landmark. Unfortunately, Bulgarian government after 1989 abdicated from its duty to protect cultural and historical landmarks. Officials perceived democracy as an opportunity not to spend time and efforts on performing standard government functions, the functions that justify the very existence of government. Law and order deteriorated, education deteriorated, landmarks were sold away to private individuals and companies. In theory, the law required any owner of a landmark object to care for its maintenance. However, there was nobody to execute the law. Predator "investors" started buying landmarks and deliberately letting them to deteriorate by all means short of openly calling a wreckage crew. After some time, the landmark in question reliably turned into ruin, its disappearance was documented and the owner was free to do whatever he wished on his cleared land.

On Jan. 7, the Trud daily reported on its 2nd page:

"Greeks are appealing a fine for the Sugar Factory

The owners of the former Sugar Factory in Sofia are appealing in court the fine of 100,000 lv. (about EUR 50,000 - M.M.). It was imposed on them by the Municipality of Sofia because the building was dangerous. In December 2009, collapse of a concrete plate in the factory killed two Roma (Gypsies - M.M.). The Greek company TAB Real Estate, which owns the building, says that the fine is too high..."

I remember that day in 2009 (it was actually November, not December). My mother in-law came back from shopping and said, "I have passed by the Gypsy ghetto, people had gathered there, women were crying. Something has happened. Let's watch the TV news to find out." The same evening, TV channels reported that three young Gypsy men, two brothers and their brother in-law, had gone into the sugar factory building to collect iron pieces to sell them for scrap (many unemployed Gypsies try to feed themselves and their families in this way). However, the iron rail they took turned out to be a supporting part, so the building collapsed over them. The brother in-law managed to escape, but the two brothers were buried under the ruins and later found dead by the rescue team. Dnes.dir.bg gives their names as Dimitar and Stefan and their ages as 31 and around 40.

It was immediately reported that the owner was a Greek entrepreneur who not only failed to take the measures prescribed by the municipality to strenghten and guard the building but actually encouraged the local Gypsies to remove metal parts from it in order to accelerate its deterioration. The quotes below are from a Nov. 19, 2009 report by the BNT TV channel:

"Two brothers die in Sugar Factory building collapse

...Minko Gerdzhikov, Deputy Mayor of Sofia, said, "Owner of the building is TBA Real Estate (most other sources give it as TAB - M.M.). This is a Greek company, the owner's name is Kafalis. At present, he is hiding from us, does not want to speak. He is clearly aware that he is guilty of negligence. On the other hand, he apparently wanted this property not as a sugar factory but as a piece of land to be used by him for other purposes. I was informed by police sources that the owners even encouraged those living in the vicinity to demolish the building."

The locals quickly found whom to blame. The victims' sister said, "My brothers came to earn 5 leva, to buy food for themselves and their children, because they are unemployed. The owner came himself here in front of us and told us to demolish the building and told the police not to harass us, but policemen gather and only want money from us. They stop our horse carts and take 20, 30, 50 leva and this is why my brothers died here."

In October 2009, just a month before the tragedy, BTV channel reported that the cultural landmark could collapse any moment.
I would not lay any blame on the poor Gypsy men who struggled to support their families. You cannot realistically demand respect to cultural heritage from people who are hungry. And after the owner himself told them it was OK to demolish, how could they realize they were doing something wrong? I am sorry for them and their families, and I think the owner is guilty, and also our authorities.
I wanted to have the Greek nationality of the owner confirmed before writing this post, so I waited for quite a lont time. You see, it is dangerous even to report the truth in these matters, because it spawns xenophobia, let alone trust on rumous and unconfirmed hearsay evidence. Still I would not put "Greek" in the title as Trud did. One could assume that all Greeks have invaded Bulgaria en masse to destroy our heritage.
I wonder, what would happen to Mr. Kafalis (or whatever his name is) if he had tried the same business plan in his native Greece? Greek authorities would push him down a mouse burrow, as we say. And I think any government must deal with its nationals destroying heritage, whatever country they choose for their evil deed. Cultiral and historical heritage belongs to all of the world. And there is no hope to preserve it without international cooperation, exactly as it is impossible to defeat corruption without ensuring international transparency.
I made the first photo shortly after the tragedy, in January 2010. You see the collapsing builsing, and also the open unguarded gates. Anybody could enter there, any poor Gypsy scrap collector or bum seeking refuge or playing child could become the next victim. The next three photos are from July 2010. I made them to preserve the image of the Sugar Factory which I like so much, because it continues to deteriorate. It is already in a worse state that shown in the photos, and I guess it will be levelled to the ground in a few years. The last photo, like the first one, shows the crime scene. At least, the so-called owner has made it inaccessible. There is a fence and the gate is locked. Some minor buildings of the Sugar Factory complex have not been bought by TAB Real Estate and have remained outside the fence. They are illegally occupied by Gypsy families who maintain them as they can, and they are the only parts of the cultural landmark likely to survive.

Our local school is closed

My elder son is now 5 years old, so 1st grade is within seeing distance and I am already collecting information about schools. In Bulgaria, parents are allowed to choose which public school their child will attend (as long as there are vacant places in the chosen school).
My friends with schoolchildren enrolled them in schools with high requirements. However, their children were not only with above-average intelligence but also very disciplined. The situation with my son is different because of his hyperlexia. He was a late talker and still is more than a year behind his peers in speech. Worse, he rejects the very concept of discipline. As said his classmate, "he doesn't obey at all, never follows orders". So a school with high requirements would hardly be suitable for him. On the contrary, we need a tolerant school where difficult children are not regarded as things to get rid of.
I first thought of our local school, Primary School No. 110. Indeed, our district of Zaharna Fabrika (Sugar Factory) is mixed, so we could expect some Gypsy students. Most of my friends would never consider educating their children together with Gypsy ones, because this automatically lowers the quality of teaching (and if some opponent here objects and starts talking about racism, I would kindly ask him to bring his head out of the sand). However, I would not be bothered if my son has Gypsy classmates, as long as they don't bully him. This is not because I am less racist than my friends but because my son anyway learns what he is willing and ready to learn, rather than what he is taught, so the classroom environment isn't as important for him as it is for other children.
However, as soon as I found the school building (a rather nice one, with noble dark-red colour), I heard that it has been closed, most likely forever. My city of Sofia has so few schools that all of them work in two shifts, so the news of closing a school sounded insane. My mother in-law, who (unlike me) has lived for decades in Zaharna Fabrika and knows all local gossip, told me how it happened.
"The school was closed because it had too few students; as you know, schools with a number of students below the reglament are closed. When the downward trend first appeared, teachers and municipality officials tried to recruit additional students from the Gypsy ghetto. There were many school-age children there, but their parents didn't want to let them attend school. The officials offered the parents benefit money and they agreed. However, when those Gypsy children started going to the school, Bulgarian parents moved their children to other schools. Very soon there were fewer students than before enrolling the Gypsies, so the school had to be closed. I don't think it will ever be opened again. The building will most likely be sold and used for other purposes."
If you ask what happened to the Gypsy schoolchildren - I cannot be sure, but I guess they have returned to their so-called parents and now don't go to any school.
My husband, who had attended School No. 110, was saddened when he heard about its demise. His mother laughed and said that he may now pretend to be sad, but does he remember how after the big earthquake in 1977 he expressed hope that the school building has collapsed?
To end the post - I don't intend for the moment to discuss the big question of educating all children and inclusion vs. segregation. Let me just mention here that if regarding disadvantaged children as mere obstacles to other children's education is troubling, I find at least as troubling the attitude of regarding "privileged" children as little civil servants who are obliged to go to school in order to educate and integrate, rather than to learn. I'll be thankful to readers who share their own experience in these matters.

Don't buy stolen things

Several days ago, as my friend was travelling in a tram, two or three Gypsy women raided through it and her cellular phone disappeared from her bag. Usually in such cases people rush to blame the victim ("Why didn't you look after your things?"), so let me mention that pickpockets know their job well and, besides, my friend was a bit out of touch with the surrounding because she was just returning from a funeral.
The phone had been bought via monthly payments, so my friend for a couple of months will continue to pay for a device she no longer owns. However, she is not a material person and easily got over this. She regrets only the digital photos she had made, about 40 files that were stored only in the phone. "They stole my moments," she complained to me.
The police apparently aren't in a hurry to do anything. They said, "Cellular phones are often found but it takes a long time." As far as I know, the mode of operation of a cellular phone allows it to be located within hours.
I don't want to muse now about these nasty Gypsy thieves who make a living by preying on hard-working people too poor to afford a car. They are miserable creatures, how good that we weren't born in one of their families to grow up like them. Neither am I going to rant about our police. We all know that it isn't there to help us. I am now thinking of the white, educated, law-abiding Bulgarians who buy a second-hand phone without much thought about its origin and then brag about the good deal. These people are the reason why cellular phones are stolen. If pickpockets couldn't sell so easily what they steal, they would pick only a few cellular phones to supply themselves and their family members.
So my appeal is: Don't buy a second-hand cellular phone unless you know and trust its former owner. In countries like Bulgaria, there is much chance for the phones offered for sale to be stolen. The same holds true for second-hand computers, car radios, CD players and many other devices.

Day care failures

This year, for the first time children in Sofia will apply for day care online. The system had to open at 9.00, i.e. 5 minutes ago. However, when I tried to open the site 30 minutes ago, it loaded only partially. I restarted everything and tried again. Then, the site failed to upload at all. A minute ago, it loaded partially, but when I tried to register, I saw just a message, "ERROR. Service unavailable. The requested service is unavailable. Try again later."
Not only I but also many other people had anticipated troubles with this site. They can be expected every time when a Bulgarian site is to be "attacked" by thousands of users simultaneously, especially if this is tried for the first time. But the Sofia Municipality and the site designer kept reassuring us that everything would be OK. Eh well, it isn't.
I was also afraid that I would have problem with my Internet - this happens sometimes. However, my ISP didn't fail me this time. The connection with Blogger is notoriously sensitive, and it is excellent now. So it must be the site's fault.
As I am writing this, I keep trying at another window to register, and the system is tossing me out again and again.
In a normal situation, I wouldn't have to be so upset. What, if the system is overloaded now, I could try in the afternoon or tomorrow. However, there are too few positions in day care. Thousands of children will inevitably be left out and I am afraid now that my toddler will be among them, because the positions will go to those registered first. This situation is very wrong because municipality day care centers are heavily subsidized. I always get mad when I am told that some taxpayer-sponsored facility has "insufficient" capacity. Do you know why? Because, when I have to pay my taxes, nobody ever asks me whether I have "sufficient" money to pay. So, if I always manage to find the money government asks from me, I feel entitled to expect something in return.
Bulgarian citizens and authorities always lament that too few Bulgarian babies are born. This is the definition of hypocrisy. I can tell first-hand why they are so few: because they are not welcome. You don't encourage parents to have more children by making them crazy about the children they already have.
My rant is ready for publishing now, and I still cannot register!
Update: It was almost 1 PM when the system let me in.
Update 2: In fact, I have been lucky. Other parents have failed to register all day and now demand the registrations of people like me to be cancelled. The system must send us e-mails confirming the registration but nothing of this kind comes to my Inbox. And nobody tells us what we must do if we do not receive the confirmation e-mail.
Update 3: I received the e-mail on Tuesday night. However, its Cyrillic text had been transformed into a string of meaningless "monkey" symbols, e.g. the first word was "Здравейте". I had to perform full-scale deciphering, it is good that Harold Jacobs's Mathematics: A Human Endeavor had taught me how to do that. The above cited word turned out to be "Здравейте", i.e. "Hello". For Bulgarian readers interested in deciphering, I have explained it on my Bulgarian blog.
The Web site designer blamed the Monday failure on hacker attacks. Nobody believes this too much. First, hackers have no special motivation concerning this particular site, and second, when you design a site, you keep in mind that not all people in cyberspace are nice, don't you? The Gyuvech Web portal today publishes the following joke on the subject:
"Police press center reports that the hackers who attacked the day care application site have been caught. The suspects I.P. (2.5) and B.B. (3) were motivated by their unwillingness to attend day care."

Pharmacies for pharmacists only! Air companies for pilots only!

Our district traditionally has had one pharmacy. About a year ago, another one was opened. However, it was closed three or four months ago. I thought, apparently the consumer demand for pharmacy products in our districts isn't high enough to allow a second pharmacy.
However, when I went to the pharmacy yesterday to buy cold remedies for my husband and saw that it was closed, too, I understood something else was going on.
Bulgarian business in general is burdened by a myriad of regulations, rates and taxes. For pharmacies, there are even more of them because here buraucrats find it easy to claim that they are thinking about the patients' well-being. However, the predictable net result is that Bulgarian patients buy drugs at higher prices than patients in other European countries with much higher incomes. And keep in mind that in Bulgaria, unlike other countries, you typically pay out of your pocket 100% of the drug's price even if it is prescribed by a doctor and you have a perfect medical insurance. Worse, many drugs, including life-saving ones, aren't available in Bulgaria at all because the regulations and taxes make it impossible for manufacturers and pharmacists to profit from them, or simply because the manufacturer cannot cope with the grotesque paperwork required for the drug to be allowed for sale.
Right now, pharmacists are protesting about the latest attack on their profits by government (you can read details at Novinite). They complain they will be driven out of business and officials reply that this would be no disaster because Bulgaria now has more pharmacies per capita than other European countries. Eh well, I suppose other European countries have also fewer grocery stores and supermarkets, because the majority of people use their cars when shopping and prefer fewer but bigger shops. However, in a country where most people have no cars and will not have them in the foreseeable future, you just cannot say that it is OK if shops supplying an entire district go bankrupt. This enormously affects quality of life.
Now, the nearest pharmacy is located at about 1.5 km from my home. This is quite a long distance when the weather is bad or you have to walk through snow, as now. Worse, you have to walk through an underpass with stares which has no accessibility accommodations. I hate going there with the baby pram (just think about wheelchair users - it is absolutely impossible for them to climb down and up the stairs). So I decided not to do the journey.
In the evening, I told my mother in-law that the pharmacy has closed. She said, "I know. This happened three weeks ago, you just haven't mentioned until now. The owner has no Master degree in pharmacy, just a Bachelor degree. So the regulations ban him from owning a pharmacy. The same problem had the owner of the other pharmacy that was opened in the district last year. He also had to close."
Arrrrrgh! Indeed, one of the myriad regulations about pharmacies is that only Masters of Pharmacy can own them. Capital weekly commented that following the same logic, you must allow only pilots to own air companies! The regulation in question must have been introduced because of lobbying by pharmacists with Master degree.
I would say that these people are stupid and have the inability to think long-term that is typical for stupid people. They may be happy now for driving their competitors out of business, but as years pass, time will come for them to hand the business to their children. And then they may not be so happy, because not all children of Masters of Pharmacy will also succeed to acquire the degree!
Buraucrats give the usual explanation: "This is the practice in other countries." Why must we import every illogical thing that is practiced in other countries? I agree that the people who supply the drugs to the pharmacy and sell them to the patients should be pharmacists. But why the owner also? Master of Pharmacy degree needed to fill the tax forms?
The result, as we see, will be - many poorer people left without access to any pharmacy.

Aftermath of the 2007 local elections, part 2: The rightist crisis

This is a sort of a sequel to my Nov. 14 post.
As an anti-Communist and a person unwilling to rely on government for everything, I consider myself a rightist and vote right. Unfortunately, the right part of the political spectrum is in a deep crisis and has been so for years. This is one of the posts I am writing because I "must" write it, not because I enjoy writing it. I am doing it with a heavy heart because it calls grim thoughts about Bulgaria's past and future. To begin with, do you remember the finance minister Plamen Oresharski who during the teachers' strike deliberately protracted the negotiations and called them "village party"? He was at one time in 2003 nominated as a rightist candidate mayor of Sofia. Does this need a comment?
After the one-party Communist rule in Bulgaria ended in 1989, the main rightist political force in Bulgaria has been the Union of the Democratic Forces (Bulg. Sayuz na demokratichnite sili, abbreviated SDS). It did surprisingly good job, considering the fact that it was actually conceived by the Communist Party and the secret services. Most of the time of course SDS has been in opposition. At the parliamentary elections in 1991, it received a little more votes than the Bulgarian Socialist Party and formed a minority government supported by Ahmed Dogan's "Turkish Party" DPS. However, the next summer Pres. Zhelyu Zhelev, who was also from SDS, betrayed his people and called for a campaign to overthrow the government. This campaign was carried out viciously by the media, the trade unions (who organized an endless succession of strikes) and finally by Dogan, who withdrew his support from the government and gave it, as he said himself, "a DPS kick". Prime Minister Filip Dimitrov in late 1992 turned to the Natonal Assembly (the Bulgarian Parliament) for a confidence vote, didn't obtain it and resigned. The media presented it to the public as if Dimitrov had irresponsibly "surrendered the power" himself. Almost nobody broadcasted, heard or remembered Dimitrov's explanation that "you just cannot for more than two months rule a parliamentary republic against the will of the Parliament".
In early 1997, the unprecedented economic crisis created by the Videnov's Socialist government led to widespread riots and midterm elections. They brought to power the second (and so far, last) rightist government in recent Bulgarian history. It had an absolute majority of seats in Parliament to rely upon and did not depend on treacherous allies like Ahmed Dogan. This allowed it to have a full term. I remember it as a reasonably good government. However, it is important to remember that Bulgarians had elected it, as my brother said, "not because of having suddenly become intelligent or freedom-loving but merely because there had remained literally nothing to eat in the country". In other words, Bulgarians dislike good people and sound policies and will vote for them only in rare moments of national disaster. After being rescued from the world of hyperinflation, monthly salaries equivalent to $ 3-4 and bread disappearing from shops, they began to dislike the government. Not that it was perfect, but they disliked its good features and blamed it for them, or for imaginary sins.
The media demonized the government and particularly the Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, leader of SDS. It is strange how people tend to believe what they are told, rather than what they are actually experiencing. This well-known phenomenon underlies commercial advertising, placebo effect and, of course, political propaganda. Showered by every paper and TV channel with assertions how bad the government was, even intelligent people began to talk seriously about a "SDS failure" in governing, without of course explaining what this failure was. President Petar Stoyanov, who was from SDS, betrayed Prime Minister Kostov in a way similar to Pres. Zhelev' betrayal of PM Filip Dimitrov in 1992. When election time approached, voters began to look for some nasty person with quack promises in order to elect him. So in 2001 Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha came out of the blue and won a landslide victory.
Being in opposition isn't very healthy for a political party, at least in Bulgaria. There was a tradition for SDS leaders to resign after losing elections. So Ivan Kostov stepped down and the party leadership was given to Nadezhda Mihaylova, a person with mediocre abilities combined with giant craving for power. In one of my posts about the HIV trial in Libya, I wrote, "Foreign minister in Kostov's government was Nadezhda Mihailova, a lady who did much harm to the Bulgarian democracy (Bulgarian readers know that I don't mean the Libyan case alone). She not only didn't hold to any moral principles, but evidently had too little intellect for the positions she occupied and used this intellect exclusively to enrich her family. Historians will (hopefully) reveal what brought her to the top of Bulgarian politics and kept her there for so long."
As a SDS leader, Mihaylova made too many blunders to list, so I shall mention just the one I find most serious. After priest Stefan Kamberov, supporter of democracy, was beaten to death by two pro-Communist priests in 2002, she took the side of the murderers.
The 2003 local elections were a fiasco for SDS. The party failed to win even in its stronghold, the capital Sofia. According to the tradition, Mihaylova had to resign but she refused. Discontent grew among SDS members and supporters at grass-root level. Activists expelled from the party formed an "association of citizens" called Dialogue. Craftsmen signed an appeal for less government intervention in economy and lower taxes that was published in the Pro & Anti paper. All these people called to Ivan Kostov to leave SDS and to form a new party.
He had no choice but to do it. A new party, Democrats for strong Bulgaria (DSB), was founded. Unfortunately, things went wrong. Ivan Kostov was, and still is, a very strong personality. People like him tend to dominate and not to let other strong personalities around. If such a person is a party leader, he is likely to make the party a leader-type one. That is, even supporters of the party (like me in this case) have difficulties naming distinguished members of the party. Where are the Dialogue people, where are the craftsmen? They have been driven away.
What remained of SDS didn't develop better. Mihaylova clutched to the leader's chair for so long that a journalist and SDS member joked that apparently a NATO operation was needed to remove her. Finally, she resigned. Former President Petar Stoyanov (who had lost the 2001 presidential elections to Georgi Parvanov) took the leadership. And surprisingly, only several months before the local elections Stoyanov was "convinced" to resign and Plamen Yurukov was elected as SDS leader. I know nothing about Yurukov except what I read in The Guerilla's blog. I'll translate almost all of his July 30 post:
"Why SDS has no chance
'I don't remember. When you buy such a thing you immediately forget the price. Pleasure has no prime.' This was the answer of Plamen Yurukov, the new SDS leader, when Express (paper) asked him about the price of his new car Maserati Quattroporte.
In a normal country, such a purchase followed by such a statement means immediate political suicide. In Bulgaria, it means a slow political suicide. In other words, at the next elections SDS will have fewer votes than members."
A commenter wrote, "What's bad in this (answer)? The man has a successful business and has bought himself a nice car." The Guerrilla replied, "If "the man" had answered, 'I have a successful business which is... and the legal profits from it allowed me to buy this car which costs xxxxx leva, then he might have some future as a politician and SDS as a party, but he answered the way he prefered to answer..."
I have nothing to add.
And then, a month before the local elections, DSB and SDS in Sofia formed a coalition and nominated a common candidate mayor. This was good, with one "small" exception - the choice of the candidate.
In the pre-election Oct. 19 post on my Bulgarian blog, I wrote, "I don't truly like any of the candidates. In such a situation you vote for the one who seems the least evil. For Sofia, this is Martin Zaimov. Yes, I know the objections against him. I also don't like his tainted and troubled family history and (as a result) personal biography. I dislike his expensive campaign, his nervous communication style, his magician's posture ("I know everything, I can do everything, I have money for everything"), his desire to be liked by everybody and his refusal to answer unpleasant questions. But for whom (else) to vote?"
There is a rumour that Ivan Kostov was personally responsible for Zaimov's nomination. If this is true, I think Kostov must resign and leave the political landscape for good. I'll even add, as the politically incorrect Bulgarian saying goes, that he deserves a good beating for this.
Why? First, because of Martin Zaimov's origin. He is grandson of Vladimir Zaimov, a general sentenced to death and executed in 1942 for being a Soviet spy - the only Bulgarian general ever convicted of espionage. During the Communist era, Gen. Zaimov was of course regarded as a hero, had an important street and a park in Sofia and other objects named after him. His family members enjoyed privileges. Because in Bulgaria being rightist means first and foremost being anti-Communist, it was a folly to nominate Vladimir Zaimov's grandson as a rightist candidate, especially in Sofia which is an anti-Communist stronghold and where the Zaimovs have lived in front of people's eyes.
Well, you'll say, a person isn't responsible for what his grandfather did. This is a valid point and I tried to make it to my father. But his answer was also valid: "Although such an ancestor isn't your fault, he is a part of your social heritage, and a part that you cannot brush aside. If you are in this position, it is only decent to stay away from politics."
Events that followed proved my father right and me wrong. Martin Zaimov, when asked about his grandfather during the campaign, tried to convince people that the latter actually hadn't been a Soviet spy and his death sentence was a miscarriage of justice. Some "helpful" historians and rightist politicians tried to perpetuate this new version of history, which was perceived by the anti-Communist voters as an additional insult. (Gen. Zaimov's treachery is proven beyond any reasonable doubt. Immediately after his execution, a military ceremony was carried out in the Soviet Union as a tribute to him. The only detail still worth discussion is what was more important for his motivation - his leftist and pro-Russian views or the money he received.)
Martin Zaimov's opponents of course used his mistake well. They not only kept talking about his granddad but used their positions in the Sofia Municipality Council to restore the name of the Vladimir Zaimov park (which had been renamed to Oborishte after 1989). Martin Zaimov was against this change but he lacked solid arguments because he had whitewashed Vladimir Zaimov himself. After all, if the general hadn't really been a traitor, why not name a local landmark after him? Now, the park will carry the traitor's name long after the entire Martin Zaimov's campaign is forgotten!
The family problems don't end with the grandfather but continue into the next generation. Vladimir is the maternal grandfather of Martin. Martin is the son of Vladimir's daughter Klaudia. Then, why does Martin carry the Zaimov family? Maybe in some cultures it is normal to inherit the mother's family but in Bulgaria this indicates troubled family history. Klaudia Zaimova worked in Geneva and met there Martin's father, British journalist Michael Goldsmith. Little is known about this man, Martin and his campaign team avoid talking about him. Martin's Wikipedia page states that "the mother gave her son the well-known Zaimov family". Some inofficial sources, however, say that he used his father's family when this would be beneficial - in some Western and Jewish circles (Goldsmith was a Jew). This is just a rumour but I make a connection with Martin's strange reluctance to show his diplomas - it would be easy to explain if they carry the name of Martin Goldsmith.
Klaudia Zaimova was in Geneva to work for an UN institution. The family was always privileged during the Communist regime. Unfortunately, Martin Zaimov tried to deny this and in his blog said he was a nevazvrashtenets - so were called the people who had left Bulgaria for political reasons and were refusing (and not actually allowed) to return. Martin's British citizenship and family position allowed him to escape the military service mandatory for all non-disabled men of his generation.
I have noticed a long time ago that there are people who bury in secrecy the most basic facts of their life, such as their education and family status, and this is a sure sign that the person doesn't deserve to be trusted. This is quite true for Martin Zaimov, where the uncertainty begins with his name. It continues with his educational degree. He reportedly has studied technology in Sofia and economics in London but refuses to show his diplomas. After former PM Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and other politicians claimed to have degrees they actually hadn't, the Bulgarian voters are understandably reluctant to believe such claims unsupported by documents. I would also add that a person born in Geneva to a Bulgarian and a British parent has the right to enroll as a foreign student in any university in the world, so even if he has graduated, his diploma wouldn't weigh as much as that of the other graduates of the same university. Indeed, he did a good job as a head of the currency board introduced in 1997.
Possibly the most unclear aspect of Zaimov's life is his family status. You can search and compile different sources for a day and you'll still be unable to say how many children Zaimov has from how many women and whether he has ever been married to any of the mothers.
During the election campaign, Zaimov displayed nervousness and communication problems that seemed to be partly inherent to his personality and partly due to the situation - after being pampered and cushioned for all his life, now he was for the first time on his own. This was in stark contrast with the confident stance of his rival Boyko Borisov who has many sins but also the merit of a man building his success himself. Zaimov also made the mistake that Petar Stoyanov had made before him - an attempt to appeal to everybody. He even refused to state what his sexual orientation is, possibly fearing that homosexuals would dislike him if he stresses on his heterosexuality.
The results of Zaimov's nomination were inevitable and disastrous. The rightist Bulgarian voters don't like communist nomenklatura offspring, don't like privileged boys who escape the Army, don't like fathers refusing to marry their children's mothers and don't want to be ruled by people coming from abroad. I was an aide to a strongly anti-Communist disabled voter. He disliked Borisov but voted for him, saying that it was unthinkable for a person with his anti-Communist views and background to vote for Zaimov. This seems to have been the case with many. Borisov received 53% of votes, Zaimov only 18% and a friend of mine (who, like me, had voted for Zaimov) told me that she liked the result because she expected even a worse one! After losing the elections, Zaimov predictably failed to meet his defeat with dignity.
I am afraid that this post became unfair to Zaimov. Most likely he didn't push himself to be a candidate mayor but was convinced by rightist politicians such as Kostov. And if not anything else, we must acknowledge Zaimov's courage to enter and fight a lost battle. I wrote so extensively about (against) him in order to attack not him but the politicians who nominated him. A commenter wrote on my above cited post that "Martin is the greatest disgrace of the rightists". Sadly, this is true.
Indeed, the political stagnation in Bulgaria led to a severe shortage of people fit to be nominated. As Marfa wrote, "campaign teams began literally scraping the bottom of the marsh, hoping to retrieve some not quite unknown life form." And perhaps Martin Zaimov was chosen because of his expertise in finance. After all, some economic and governing expertise is necessary for the mayor of a capital city populated by 1.5 million. Unfortunately, 18 years after democracy was restored, in many fields we still lack experts with non-Communist background!
But more important than expertise is electability. Once elected, a mayor could hire some experts, while an expert disliked by the voters will never make it to the position and so will not have a chance to use his expertise. Perhaps the biggest problem of our rightist politicians is their disrespect to the voters. You cannot neglect and scorn the voters in a democracy without being severely punished by them.
How to save the vital right part of the political spectrum? I am not the only one who thinks that a new party must formed by the few decent current rightist politicians such as the SDS member of Parliament Martin Dimitrov. This party should be open to all citizens with rightist views who now stay aside, alienated and often expelled by the two current parties. Will it come to life? I am pessimistic. In Bulgarian politics, what should happen rarely happens in reality.

Prison art

In the late 1940's, as the Communist regime was tightening its grip on Bulgaria, my father was among those who opposed it. He became member of a secret anti-communist organization. Unfortunately, the founder and leader of the group was a provocator. He lured the others and then gave them up to the authorities, quite as O'Brien did with Winston Smith in Orwell's 1984. They served prison time, 4 years for my father. While awaiting the trial, they were placed in the Sofia Central Prison.
Several days ago, my father remembered the prison church. Until 1950, priests in magnificent Orthodox vestments were allowed to read sermons there. The church was beautifully decorated. Inmates serving sentences in the first half of the 20th century had painted murals on the walls. They were excellent, although the prisoners were amateur artists. My father remembers, in particular, a Christ walking on water painted by Anton Prudkin. This interesting person was naturally drawn to the sea theme because he was a sailor. He was a terrorist and Russian agent and this was why he was jailed from 1925 to 1936 and later executed in 1942. However, he was not entirely evil. In 1939, he was captain of a ship that sailed 3 times between Bulgaria and Palestine, bringing there more than 2000 Jewish refugees.
In 1950, the religious freedom in the Sofia Central Prison was put to an end. The church walls were whitewashed with lime. (The Bulgarian reader will remember the moment in Ivaylo Petrov's novel Wolfhunt where the Communists led by Stoyan Kralev burn the icons of the village church.)
What is remarkable, the prison authorities themselves were clearly reluctant to destroy the murals. The chief jailer in front of some inmates scratched the newly formed lime layer with his fingernail and said, "Oh there is no problem. It will be easily scraped away." (The Communist regime often abolished the acts of folly it had ordered itself, sometimes quite shortly after imposing them.)
However, in this case the order was not cancelled. My father was transfered to another prison and had no more first-hand information, but other former inmates later told him that the lime layer had become tight and impossible to remove. My father wasn't surprised because he knew that lime becomes more and more stable with time. As he explained to me, this happens because calcium oxide takes up carbon dioxide from the air and turns into calcium carbonate.
At one moment, the former church reportedly became room for executions.
What has been its fate in recent years? I have no idea but I think that experts in chemistry and restoration must know a way to remove even an old, tight lime cover without much damage to the underlying paintings. But more than half a century later, does the prison personnel include even one employee who knows about the murals? And would anybody care?
There is little time to restore the prison art and capture the images. The municipal authorities of Sofia have scheduled the Central Prison building for demolition.

Aftermath of the 2007 local elections, part 1: Boyko Borisov, again

At last month's elections, Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov won a second term by a landslide victory at the first round. I hoped that at least there would be a second round.
I am happy that I have dealt with Borisov in detail in my May 30 post and so don't need to do it now.
As a resident of Sofia and a local patriot, I was definitely saddened by the election results. I envied the residents of the city of Varna as I watched on TV their re-elected mayor Kiril Yordanov. He is a socialist and not a perfect mayor. But he at least looked well in a suit. By contrast, our mayor looked as if two strong men had put the suit on him by force while four others were restraining him.
Two days ago, I received from a friend the following e-mail:

"Maya, see what has been published by the FrontPage Magazine:
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/Read.aspx?GUID=BCC972FF-991E-428C-BF7E-8A5EE36F8DCE
If the link doesn't work, the title is Bulgaria's Future
"Sheriff"?, by John Wilhelm. I'm afraid John Wilhelm hasn't made the necessary effort to check some things in detail... As if it wasn't enough that we elected Big Brother Boyko at the first round, plus many more his clones in other cities, and now he is being made popular in America!"
Let me now discuss some quotes from the article:

"There have been many visible improvements since Borissov took over as Sofia’s mayor. The city’s parks have been cleaned up; its old public buildings are being repaired, repainted, and magnificently lit; and a new Metro line is under construction..."
I see no visible improvements, and I am living in Sofia. The Metro was in construction, and a part of it working, long before Borisov took office. As for the "old public building being repaired" - Borisov has continued the unfortunate tradition of Sofia mayors to allow demolition of landmark buildings to make space for ugly modern business centers bringing more profits. Right now, Bulgaria Hotel and Bulgaria Concert Hall are scheduled for destruction. Details at the Guerrilla's blog, e.g. here. Bulgarian readers are advised to sign an online petition for the preservation of these buildings at http://www.bgpetition.com/SAVE_Grand-Hotel_and_Concert-Hall_Bulgaria-Sofia/index.html.

"Bulgaria’s Black Sea Coast and mountain ski resorts is flourishing."
This needs no comment, just check the Black List and my recent post about it.

"While in Sofia earlier this year I interviewed Mayor Borissov... Behind him was his favorite, and perhaps most telling, graphic piece: A movie-poster painting of actor Yul Brynner and six rugged cowboys atop galloping horses charging against the bad guys in a scene from the classic Western, “The Magnificent Seven.” It’s a tale of gunslingers enlisted by desperate villagers to assist in a noble cause. This says it all."
I wouldn't advise anybody to use popular culture as a guide for real-life decisions. I have enjoyed Pretty Woman, but would it be wise for a young girl to become a prostitute with the hope of marrying a millionaire?

"While it is true that there were a number of unsolved gangland murders during Borissov's tenure as Secretary-General at the Interior Ministry, Bulgarians credit him with sharply reducing ordinary crime."
Indeed, some Bulgarians credit him with reducing crime although no such thing happened.
Mr. Wilhelm, why didn't you do your homework before writing the article? Even Jenny McCarthy (who will be featured in a coming post) can use Google! And it is for people like you that people like me take the trouble to write in English.
Or you know the real nature of B.B. and would never vote for him but find him good enough for Balkan barbarians like us?

The most troubling news concerning Boyko and his so-called party came to me from the village of Musachevo. My husband works for a company having a production unit in this village. The elected mayor was from GERB, the party of Boyko Borisov. After the elections, local people said that they were given them money as a bribe to vote for the GERB candidate, 50 leva (EUR 25) per voter. (Buying votes isn't rare at elections in Bulgaria, but this October it was of unprecedented scale and arrogance.) Some villagers took the money and then voted for the other candidate. After the elections, thugs came to the village, found these voters and slapped them in the faces.

The embedded video shows the song "My firefighter", a 1999 parody of a chalga song, performed by Radka Kurshumova. It has all the hallmarks of the awful popular Bulgarian music known as chalga - pseudo-folk elements and explicit references to sex. I am translating the first verses of the lyrics:

Firefighter, how much I love you!
I’ll set you on fire with my eyes.
Because I am a girl made of fire,
Direct your fire hose at me.
Oh my firefighter, you are a super boy!
Extinguish the fire in me, thank you!

I saw this video on the blogs of Marfa and Lyd. These two Bulgarian bloggers, who live in other cities, had embedded it as an ironic greeting to Sofia residents for re-electing Borisov because he is a former firefighter. Yes, my fellow Sofia residents, by electing Big Brother Boyko we made ourselves a laughing matter for the entire country!
At the discussion of Marfa's post, it was mentioned that Radka Kurshumova resembles the singer in Kusturica's movie Black cat, white cat as two droplets of water resemble each other, except for the absence of the nail.

Boyko Borisov: portrait of a winner

On May 20, Bulgarians voted for the first time to send representatives to the European Parliament. You can see the results at http://www.socialistgroup.org/gpes/newsdetail.do?lg=bg&id=39356&href=home&site=msb. Most of the votes have gone to GERB (the party of the Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov), to the Socialist party and to DPS (the Movement for Rights and Freedoms). These three parties have obtained almost equal number of votes and will have 5 seats each. Two other parties will also send representatives to the European Parliament: Ataka (2 seats) and NDSV (Simeon II National Movement, 1 seat).

To be honest, I considered not voting at these elections because I don't believe the European Parliament is a useful institution. However, finally I made up my mind to vote (for one of the rightist parties that remained below the bar). So now I may, like every thinking Bulgarian, pull off my hair as I'm looking at the election results, but at least I don't feel guilty.

Why do I regard the results as a disaster? Let's mention the winning parties one by one. I've blogged about NDSV's leader Simeon II Saxe-Coburg-Gotha at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/06/noblemen-who-steal-umbrellas.html and about Ataka at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/09/dimitar-stoyanov-child-prodigy-of.html (D. Stoyanov will go to the European Parliament again as the first of the two Ataka representatives). I've also blogged about the Turkish party DPS at http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/04/dps-conference.html. In these elections, its good result was due not only to almost 100% mobilization of ethnic Turkish and Bulgarian Muslim voters (projected on the low activity of Bulgarian voters) but also on bribing many Gypsies and reportedly on intimidating some Bulgarians to vote for DPS. The Socialist Party is the renamed Communist Party from the Iron Curtain era; it still talks and promises social nonsense to its voters despite making virtually every member of its leadership a rich capitalist - need I say anything more? So now I have to describe only the big winner - GERB or, to be precise, its leader Boyko Borisov, because no one ordinary Bulgarian, including those who have voted for GERB, knows anything about its program or can name a distinguished member of the party other than Borisov.

My work is facilitated by Wikipedia, where Borisov is featured both in English and in Bulgarian. Born in 1959, he graduated the police college as a firefighter lieutenant in 1982 and began work in the Ministry of Internal Affairs (the police). He made a PhD thesis titled Psychological and physical training of (police and firefighter) personnel. (I had to work on my PhD thesis for 11 years and to publish its results in peer reviewed journals with impact factor, so excuse me if I view Borisov's "PhD" as a personal insult.) Borisov was a member of the Bulgarian Communist Party - this was mandatory for every police officer during the Communist rule. After this rule ended in 1989, police were de-politicized and their officers had the choice to leave the Party or resign. Borisov preferred the Party and left the police in 1990. However, I wouldn't rush to call him a diehard communist - I think this was for him not a political matter but a convinient way to obtain a honourable discharge in order to start a business.
In 1991, Borisov founded the private security company IPON-1 that guarded personalities like the former dictator Todor Zhivkov and the above mentioned Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. I copied this from Wikipedia. What you won't find in Wikipedia is that IPON-1 was one of the numerous "security companies" abundant in the early 1990s and active in intimidation of the nascent private sector. Every businessman had to pay one or another of these companies for security, or trouble followed. The "security personnel" became known as mutras. Before 1990, "mutra" was an informal word for "face", usually an ugly man's face. Later, it became a term for the whole personality of the mutra-possessing racketeer thug. A person I know worked at that time for a company guarded by IPON-1. When Borisov's star rose on the political sky, that person said to me, "How can people like Borisov? Don't they see that he is a mutra?" The same source told me that "he isn't a dull mutra, he knows his business and never puts his signature under a document that may later be used against him". I'm citing this person because I fully trust him. At http://oshte.info/doc/boikoborisov/001.htm, you'll find (in Bulgarian) much more outrageous information about Borisov, but I prefer not to cite it, because I cannot guarantee the source is trustworthy. The author has preferred to remain anonimous, which I find more disturbing than anything he reports: apparently, when it comes to Boyko Borisov (similarly to Islam in other countries), free speech exists no more.

Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha presumably appreciated the security provided by IPON-1, because when he became Prime Minister in 2001, Boyko Borisov returned to the police on a white horse. He became Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and colonel. Next year Borisov was promoted again, to general. As some commented ironically, such a fast climbing up the ranks is usually observed only for active combatants during a war.

In Bulgaria, the Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs is the highest-ranking professional in the Ministry responsible for implementing the policy of the Minister (a political and usually non-professional figure) into practical actions. However, the Secretary also has the function to address the public in cases of important events concerning the police. So, if a charismatic and ambitious person occupies this post, there is a danger that, instead of serving the law and order, he will use his position to make himself popular as a stepstone for a future political career. This has happened before with Bogomil Bonev, Secretary in the early 1990s and not too far from winning the 2001 presidential elections (he remained third). Boyko Borisov's performance fitted the same pattern, in an enhanced and much more dangerous variant. In the early 2000s, I watched more TV and had more social contacts than now, so I could see Borisov's tactic and its reflection on ordinary Bulgarians.

Look at Borisov's photo above (copied from http://sofia.bg/display.asp?ime=bb&title=%20%20&pathtitle=%20%20; the same photo was used in the recent election campaign for the European Parliament). Though a single static image, it tells much about Borisov and the roots of his popularity. First, this heavily built man with large mandible is very masculine. He is a macho archetype, or as I called him once, a Neanderthalian sex symbol (http://mayas-corner.blogspot.com/2006/10/dont-vote-for-georgi-parvanov.html). Being a heterosexual woman, I can easily detect his powerful primitive sexuality; however, I can even more easily reject its appeal, thanks to the thick layers of culture covering the female animal in my core. But many Bulgarian women yielded to Borisov's charm.

Of course this wouldn't be enough to bring success, because only half of the voters are female. One could expect Borisov's Paleolithic masculinity, while attracting women, to turn jealous men away. Perhaps it would, if they were truly men. But in our not so distant communist past, the omnipresent and intrusive government restrained and protected us in the same time, predictably making us infantile. To give an example, the majority of healthy adult Bulgarians don't regard themselves truly capable to stand on their own feet and provide for themselves, therefore they don't vote right. A party that doesn't promise tons of "social politics" has no chance to win elections in Bulgaria. Deep inside, our adults feel like children left on their own in a complex and cruel world; and Borisov appeared in front of them as a strong and caring Big Brother.

A psychologist said that the appearance and posture of Borisov (e.g. the leaned head) radiates aggression but this only brings him popularity because he is perceived as the good guy who will protect us from the bad guys and beat them up. Indeed, he deliberately makes himself looking aggressive by his three-day beard, short haircut and black leather jacket - the last two characteristics shared by regular participants in street fights. I don't see well how he is dressed in the above photo, but he usually wears the black leather jacket even on occasions when the protocol requires a suit. During his term as a police Secretary, whenever a grave crime occurred, he was quick to arrive at the scene in his jacket (like Batman, as Starshel paper ironized him). Presumably stepping on and damaging pieces of forensic evidence, he was explaining to journalists that the perpetrators would soon be found. The public liked these promises and didn't at all insist that they be kept.

By 2005, he was so popular that Saxe-Coburg-Gotha used him as a bait for voters in the parliamentary elections. Borisov was nominated and elected in two regions but didn't take his position in Parliament and openly admitted that he had taken part in the elections only "for the King's (i.e. Simeon's) sake". I think that in any normal democratic country such a behaviour would put an end to the person's popularity and political career. In Bulgaria, it didn't. Later in the same year, he was elected Mayor of the capital Sofia - the third most important position in the country after the Prime Minister and the President.

A year and a half later, the approval rating of Boyko Borisov remains high in Sofia, though it will be difficult for his supporters to say what actually he has done for the city. I can point at only one major achievement: unraveling of massive theft at the Sofia's heating utility, leading to the indictment of its former head Valentin Dimitrov (nicknamed Valyo the Warmth by journalists after the scandal bursted out). At http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=80933, you can read (in English) a short report about Dimitrov covering just a small episode of his saga; many millions of Euros with unexplainable origin were found in Dimitrov's accounts in Bulgarian and foreign banks. In Bulgaria, a major cause for the widespread chronic poverty are the "natural" monopolies - the heating, electricity, water and telephone companies that enjoy priviledged law status and rob the population with impunity, charging the hapless client as much as they want. In big cities, poor insulation of most homes and of heating pipes, combined with lack of control over the heating company, leads to average heating bills approaching average salaries. Moreover, once you have heating pipes in your home, you are forced to pay the heating company even if you decide not to use its services and remove all radiators. So it is small wonder that, despite the nearly subtropical climate of Bulgaria, we expect the winter with horror in our hearts - another feature (besides liking people like Borisov) which unites us with the Neanderthals. It is also logical that ordinary people cheered Borisov for exposing Valyo the Warmth. Unfortunately, they forgot to ask why, after the big thief was caught, the heating bills during the following winter were as high as before and even higher. To me, the only explanation is that somebody is stealing again, this time with the blessing of Mayor Borisov.

How will Borisov's career develop now after his May 20 election victory? Nobody knows exactly, but it is surely ascending and I don't like this at all. As my friend said years ago during Bogomil Bonev's campaign, in no real democracy could a person coming from the police be a serious candidate for any important elected position; this is possible only in a police state, or in a nascent democracy wished by too many of its citizens to become a police state. But besides his police background, there are many other reasons not to elect Borisov, as I pointed above. Radio Free Europe rightly called him (during the 2005 municipal election campaign) "a dangerous populist". (BTW, looking for my old post where I had mentioned Borisov in order to cite it, I tried a Google search for Boyko Neanderthal. The search results included a participant in the Sofia News Agency forum saying, "I'm terrified that anyone considers the neanderthal King Mutra Uncle Boyko could hold any post in public life". So the cyberspace contains at least one other person sharing my opinion.)

Somebody could ask, "But comparing Borisov to the other figures in the Bulgarian political panopticum, do you really find him much worse than the others? What actual harm do you expect from his potential rule, keeping in mind that now much of Bulgaria's politics will be determined by the European Union?" The answer: I don't expect Borisov to do much harm to the factual reality in Bulgaria, in the way Prime Minister Zhan Videnov did in 1996-97 (when Bulgaria was deprived of bread and monthly incomes dropped to the equivalent of $ 3-5). But I expect Borisov to harm the miniscule seeds of civil society in Bulgaria, because he wins support by directly engaging the subcortical brain regions and so cultivates stupidity. So his rule will postpone the emergence of true democracy in Bulgaria.

What actually is "true democracy"? It isn't just free and fair elections. It also requires political vote. That is, thinking citizens choosing between alternative programs of political parties. When people's vote is based on the candidate's tribal affiliation or personal charisma, this is not true democracy, even if the elections are free and fair. I won't say that democracy is not good for Bulgarians (or any other nation) because "they are not yet ready for it". This argument belongs to the arsenal of racist bigots and other enemies of civilization. I side with those who say that nations need time and practice to learn democratic rule after obtaining democracy, as individuals need time and practice to learn swimming after they enter the pool. But as years pass, now almost 2 decades since we were thrown into the water of democracy, I sometimes think in despair that we'll never learn to swim properly. At least we don't drown each other during our swimming lessons, as Iraqis do. But this is a pretty low standard to set.