DW: Saving Private Borissov and Other Stories

People tend to romanticize their failures. Take, for example, Prime Minister Boyko Borissov. In his career, he reached a point where 60% of the Bulgarians - both left- and right-leaning, and even some of his EPP European partners - were convinced it was time for him to step down. And for real, not like in some political theater, pretend to leave but in fact stay and pull the strings of its puppets. Nightstand drawers with wads of cash, wiretapped calls, hundreds of millions in gambling losses, accusations of bribery, and so on, his escapades have become too many. In a normal situation, they would make it impossible to whitewash any former nation's favorite.

Instead of a sober analysis, however, the government's romantic interpretation of the election landscape sounds like this: a "Fatherland Front" has risen against Borissov and he will become its innocent victim. Just like Bulgaria fell victim to Stalin's communism in the 1940s.

This romantic interpretation is actually a variation on a familiar theme: GERB protects us from Putinism and communism.

The paradox is that the otherwise intelligent people also rise to this absurd bait without worrying about the huge logical hole gaps in it. And here we are not talking about some petty banter, such as the fact that biographically Borisov (and most in GERB's elite) is no less connected to the communist past than any rank-and-file member of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP).

Nor that, in keeping us from Putinism, GERB managed to build the (Russian)Turkish Stream pipeline in record time, took the Russian side on the "Skripal" case, allowed clandestine operations of the Russian services in the "Gebrev" case, etc. (It is true that with Radev, besides all this, we would have purchased Gripen...