site.btaUPDATED Campaign Highlights: Sept. 14

Bulgaria needs a stable government where everybody shares the same values and have a firm Euro-Atlantic orientation, Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) leader Mustafa Karadayi said in the northeastern town of Dobrich Tuesday evening. In his words, in 2009, "we allowed ourselves the luxury of thinking that democracy had come once and for all and there was no need to protect and defend it, and we allowed hatred and division to take the upper hand, and for 12 years we merely observed that". With hatred and revenge-seeking, Bulgaria cannot be governed and emerge from the crises - economic, social, health and energy - in which it finds itself, Karadayi added. He went on to say that none of these crises can be addressed before the political crisis is solved, before normalcy is restored and dialogue is reestablished between the parties, the parliamentary groups, the government and the opposition, between the government and the people, between the institutions. It is dialogue that has been lacking in Bulgarian politics for the past 13 years and MRF holds the key to accord, Karadayi said.

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Continue the Change parliamentary candidates met with people in the northeastern town of Shumen to answer questions about the party's policies. The campaigners included Continue the Change co-leader and former prime minister Kiril Petkov and the top-of-the-list candidate for the 30th multi-member constituency in Shumen, Academician Nikolai Denkov. Petkov said: "The three things we can clearly say we started are an increase of pensions, free kindergarten access for the kids of young couples, and fighting corruption. Now, we need to carry on with all these policies. We should make the Counter-corruption Commission really work this time. We want to set the minimum wage at 50% of the average wage. We will also continue the pension policy."

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Vazrazhdane's top priority is to scrap the national plan for the adoption of the euro, party leader Kostadin Kostadinov told journalists in the southeastern city of Yambol. He argued that the Bulgarian lev is currently one of the ten most stable currencies in the world and the adoption of the euro "is a death sentence for the Bulgarian economy". "If the euro is introduced, it will simply destroy both the savings and the income of Bulgarian citizens," Kostadinov said. Commenting on the conflicts between Armenia and Azerbaijan, and between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, he said that Vazrazhdane is the only political force that can protect Bulgarian citizens from being dragged into a global military conflict. In his words, all the other parties are "arms of the US embassy".

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It is time for people with causes, people with hearts, people who really want to take care of others like them to enter Parliament, Rise Up Bulgaria leader Maya Manolova said in Dobrich, Northeastern Bulgaria. Crisis upon crisis are heaped in Bulgaria, many of them caused by the incompetent and corrupt governance of the former rulers, and those who bear the whole burden and pay the price are the vulnerable and the families of children with disabilities, she said. In Manolova’s opinion, The System Is Killing Us are a group of resolute women who have "endured many battles, protests and pressures on institutions". Their cause is "to do what they could not do through civil pressure through their participation in the legislature," the party leader added.

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The first protest against hypocrisy in politics was in Ruse in the 1980s. This is where real change should start and change without lies, but the lies seem to have no saturation point, There Is Such a People leading candidate for Ruse region, Iva Miteva, said in the city on the Danube. Traffic at Danube Bridge is one of Ruse’s main problems, calling for revisions to the law leaving part of the fees for crossing the facility with the municipality, she finds. "We say that strength lies in unity, but it has to be the strength of thinking and overcoming selfishness. There are capable people everywhere, but they are scattered across the parties. If everyone unites, I think the next parliament might succeed," Miteva said.

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GERB leader Boyko Borissov opened in Sofia the official presentation of GERB-UDF's recovery plan by saying, "Everyone expects us to pull them out of the crisis, as if we had a magic wand". In the plan "Bulgaria after the crises: A recovery plan" there are specific steps to overcome the economic instability and the energy crisis, to improve the business environment and encourage investment. Education and healthcare remain a priority, as does the construction of major infrastructure. There are no plans to increase taxes. The document sets at least EUR 110 billion GDP at the end of the party's potential governance in 2026. Borissov asked for cybersecurity measures to be included in the programme, including the establishment of a state agency.

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"We have a very clear plan how to get Bulgaria and its people through the winter more easily," Bulgarian Socialist Party leader Korneliya Ninova said Tuesday in north-central Pleven. The meeting with party supporters was attended by BSP leading candidates for Pleven, Rumen Gechev, and for Lovech, Vyara Emilova. "Once Parliament begins work, the first thing should be to freeze natgas prices for household users, continue the programme for compensating businesses and the party’s powerful social programme for raising incomes," said Ninova. She underscored that pensions should be recalculated as of October 1 and widow allowances increased. Free medicines for children and free text books for students up to the 12th grade should also be available. The worst scenario would be no regular government after the elections, Ninova thinks.

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The sequence of the campaign highlights featured in this report follows the ballot numbers of the 29 contestants in the October 2 snap parliamentary elections.