JOKE OF THE MONTH

Voters are being exposed to a plethora of pledges designed to make them feel good – and cast their ballots for whoever talks louder.

"Pretty sure that was in Elden Ring" Musk wrote, possibly without knowing that the photographer, Vladislav Terziyski, had heavily manipulated his picture, and possibly without realising that difficult-to-pronounce Belogradchik was a r

Perushtitsa, now a small and offbeat town rarely visited by tourists, is known to every Bulgarian as the sight of a massacre in the failed April 1876 Uprising against the Ottomans. Thirty-two-year-old Ruth Koleva is a notorious jazz, soul and R&B singer who recently signed up with Warner Music. She spends most of her time outside Bulgaria where she has excellent career opportunities. 

Though Dead Souls used to be on the national school curriculum, few latterday Bulgarians, and possibly even fewer English speakers, have actually read it, so here is a short synopsis.

The Flying Saucer, which in recent years has become one of the Top 10 world monuments for urbex, or dark tourism, was constructed in the early 1980s. It was designed to celebrate the Bulgarian Communist Party, in control of this country from 1944 to 1989. It was supposed to withstand the ravishes of both time and nature for several hundred years, as the Communists, who had commissioned it, thought they would be in power eternally.

In early June a small plane flew into Bulgarian airspace from the northwest and landed at what used to be a commercial airport near Vidin. Apparently, the aircraft refuelled. It is unclear whether the pilot or pilots got any on-the-ground assistance from anyone or just poured fuel into the plane's tank from canisters. Guards from a private security company that was supposed to protect the ruins of Vidin Airport, which was abandoned in the 1990s, noticed the activity and alerted the local police. But the aircraft was quicker. She took off before the police arrived.

In early June a small plane flew into Bulgarian airspace from the northwest and landed at what used to be a commercial airport near Vidin. Apparently, the aircraft refuelled. It is unclear whether the pilot or pilots got any on-the-ground assistance from anyone or just poured fuel into the plane's tank from canisters. Guards from a private security company that was supposed to protect the ruins of Vidin Airport noticed the activity and alerted the local police. But the aircraft was quicker. It took off before the police arrived.

Lovers of freedom were quick to cry fowl. Is this what the supposedly liberal, pro-Western Changes Continued government is doing? Protecting itself from the love of the general public with iron bars? Not even in the darkest days of Boyko Borisov's GERB had we seen anything like that, they intoned to their agony aunt, Facebook.

A recent example is the Sofia City Council's decision to rename one of the streets around where the Russian Embassy is situated to The Heroes of Ukraine, and a nearby small square to Boris Nemtsov. In addition, they agreed to have an Ukrainian flag hoisted on top of the Sofia City Council building for as long as Putin's war in Ukraine continued. The city councillors belonging to the Bulgarian Socialist Party, opposed but the decision was passed anyway.

As soon as the news of the Thursday evening arrests broke out a significant chunk of the Bulgarian population went into a frenzied jubilation comparable, according to one observer, to that goal at the 1994 World Championship Bulgaria scored against Germany. That goal. Folks started popping open new bottles of Rakiya and some of Borisov's neighbours in Bankya even organised a small fireworks display. Is the tyrant really going where he should have gone a long time ago?, Bulgarians were asking their Facebook friends.

The leaders of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, or BSP, Kornelia Ninova; of Yes Bulgaria, Hristo Ivanov; and of Democratic Bulgaria, or DB, Gen Atanas Atanasov resigned. The reason, they said, had to do with the bad election performance of their respective political organisations. Their action was novel in Bulgarian politics and the civil service as such: very few Bulgarians resign from any position of power unless they really have to.

The video, shot in the National Assembly, shows an young MP for the ruling Changes Continued political party who takes up the rostrum to make a statement to the house and then... forgets what he was about to do.

Ahead of the 14 November general election some parties – notably the DB, or Democratic Bulgaria, and the ITN, or There Is Such a People party – insisted on taking away the good old-fashioned paper election ballots that you had to use a pen to put a cross against your preferred candidate on, and substitute them with "election machines": small and not-very-difficult-to-operate contraptions where you press a series of buttons and then the thing spews out a supermarket-style receipt which you have to fold and put in a ballot box.

In the neighbourhood, I asked a retired woman, who habitually makes a public nuisance by throwing bread crumbs out of her fourth-floor balcony to feed Sofia's uncontrolled population of pigeons, to stop doing that because a uncontrolled population of pigeons carried many diseases that directly jeopardised the health of the other residents.

A sober look at the current mess of Bulgarian politics in the aftermath of 12 years of Boyko Borisov may produce some unexpected if slightly idiosyncratic explanations. Perhaps Bulgaria's political parties are where they are at – namely, at each other's throats – not because they really want to "scrape off" each other from the face of the earth but because... the publicists who invented their names badly miscalculated in the first place. If you, as a foreigner, has trouble understanding what the difference between Stand Up! Mafia Out! and Stand Up.BG! We Are Coming! is, do not worry.

Dignitaries, ministers and even foreign guests were "invited" into the jeep while the Bulgarian prime minster went for a government-provided ride. The video clips were then circulated on social media, attracting a huge number of clicks by both supporters and critics. Eagle-eyed Bulgarians, however, noted there was something wrong with the former prime minister's jeep. Oddly, its number plate was identical to the number plate of an Audi which also belonged to Boyko Borisov's retinue.

Usually made in his inimitable style, a combination of uncouth nativism and broadspeak, they can easily fill up books. Here is a selection of Borisov's most recent public statements, rendered verbatim:

At the beginning of an exam a student turns to the professor:

"Let's now see what you have taught me online."

*

"Do you remember when we were optimistic and made grandiose plans?"

"That was yesterday. Now clean up the mess."

*

"They opened the gyms."

"Finally! Haven't been to one in 12 years."

*

An electricity meter installed at a Bulgarian court suddenly changed its testimony.

*

"There are three surefire ways to lose money."

"?"

"Fast, pleasant and foolproof."

"?"

It probably is, but the genius computerists hide themselves very well, and certainly do not work for Boyko Borisov's government.

A set of supposedly confidential documents in MS Word, Excel etc, outlining Bulgaria's plans to request money from the EU for the National Recovery and Sustainability Plan post the Covid-19 pandemic were posted on Google Drive. Whoever did that left the docs unlocked, so anyone could edit and so on.

Ahead of the general election scheduled for 4 April, which is expected to generate a record-low turnout owing to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Boyko Borisov's chief prosecutor, Ivan Geshev, conducted a number of spectacular busts with an obvious potential for publicity. He cracked an alleged ring of spies for Russia, including some senior officials in the Defence Ministry and in various other state agencies. The group, according to the prosecution, sold sensitive military information to Russia – and received payments from the Russian Embassy.