BULGARIA'S CAVED-IN DEMOCRACY
An Italian writer, Roberto Saviano, who has lived for years under police protection because he was "sentenced" to death by the Neapolitan Mafia, has put it plainly: "In Italy, democracy has a mafia inside. In Bulgaria, the Mafia has democracy inside." There are of course many ways to say this, one of the most popular being the local mid-1990s adage that "every state has a mafia, in Bulgaria the mafia has a state."