site.btaUPDATED Campaign Highlights: Sept. 17

Only the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) can ensure that those who are different govern together, the party leader Mustafa Karadayi told a campaign rally in Kazanlak, Central Bulgaria on Saturday. According to Karadayi, prosperity is impossible in a divided society. Bulgaria needs the MRF's expertise and experience, he argued. NATO and the European Union are political alliances based on values, but in Bulgaria it is difficult to form political alliances based on values, he said. He called for dialogue in a cabinet free of red lines. This country needs stable governance resting on clear Euro-Atlantic values, Karadayi insisted. To tackle the economic, social, energy and financial crises, it is necessary to tackle the political crisis first. This means no more elections held every two months. All parties should sit at the table and work in harmony for the priorities and the well-being of Bulgaria. The key to harmony is in the MRF, Karadayi said.

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The formerly ruling Continue the Change (CC) party said Saturday that an audit report by the European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety (DG Sante) has confirmed the findings of the CC-led government about serious shortcomings in phytosanitary control at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint on the Bulgarian border with Turkey in the past ten years. The CC-led government of Prime Minister Kiril Petkov fought a long battle with the private contractor hired by the previous government (of GERB) to exercise phytosanitary control at the Kapitan Andreevo checkpoint. The Petkov government terminated the contractor’s ten-year contract and give the control to the state authorities but that was reversed by a court. Kapitan Andreevo is the largest EU land border checkpoint. Phytosanitary control at the Bulgarian-Turkish border is a major issue in the CC campaign for the October 2 snap elections.

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If the Bulgarian Rise coalition gets represented in the next National Assembly, it will be only in the interests of the Bulgarians, Krustyu Sotirov, the coalition's top candidate for the constituency of Razgrad (Northeastern Bulgaria), said at a meeting with members of the local public. Sotirov said that former caretaker prime minister and former defence minister Stefan Yanev, who leads Bulgarian Rise, is the man who can unite the nation, and now is the time to help him win. Sotirov said this is exactly what he himself has done. He vowed to do everything within his powers to ensure that Bulgarian Rise is represented in the National Assembly by someone from Razgrad. He said Yanev could not attend the campaign rally due to objective circumstances. The coalition's second-listed nominee for Razgrad, Tsvetelina Boteva, said she likes the idea of national conservatism and believes that national identity and the national interests are a priority.

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Meeting with supporters in the southern town of Stara Zagora Saturday, GERB MP candidate Krassimir Vulchev said that his party could contain the surging inflation within a couple of months, if it gets “the necessary support” at the upcoming elections. He said that his party has very clear ideas about what needs to be done, including legislative changes: regulation of the compensations for the expensive natural gas, extending the compensations for the high price of electricity, lowering fuel prices. “We get alarming signals about quite a few businesses planning to stop operation so it is a matter of emergency to implement a package of anti-crisis measures,” said Vulchev. He argued that the best social policy is to support all consumers. He also said that education will remain a strategic and budget priority but the public finances need to be stabilized and the budget balanced “because this country is on the brink of a budget crisis”.

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BSP for Bulgaria presented its candidates in the capital Sofia for the October 2 snap elections. Leader Kornelia Ninova, Hristo Prodanov, Georgi Svilenski and Ivan Takov will top the ticket. BSP for Bulgaria leader Kornelia Ninova said that the party has 10 solutions for each family, outlining a cap on prices, electricity compensation for businesses, increasing the minimum wage, introducing non-taxable income threshold, free medicines and books for children and recalculation of pensions. 

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.