Boyko Borisov

He tells Ukraine it should fall on its knees and accept that it will no longer exist.

Bringing back paper ballots is a pogrom against democracy.

Kiril Petkov, Changes Continued

Boyko Borisov has dreamed for long to become an Ahmed Dogan in Bankya.

Gen Atanas Atanasov, leader of the DSB

Talking about the war as if it were a video game is a dangerous hobby. Russia's war on Ukraine is not a simulation.

Caretaker Prime Minister Galab Donev

It will be easier for us to forge a British rather than a Bulgarian government.

Solomon Pasi, president of the Bulgarian Atlantic Club

Instead of getting worse, the situation is becoming hopeless.

Former Culture Minister Vezhdi Rashidov just before he was elected speaker of the new National Assembly

Having a government just for the winter sounds like having a girlfriend just for the summer.

Radan Kanev, EMP

If they were in Rome, Kiril Petkov and Asen Vasilev would put Brutus at the top of their ballots.

Slavi Trifonov, leader of the There Is Such a People party

We are brutally attacked by organsied criminals who want to stop us from taking their money.

Kiril Petkov, Changes Continued

I have never lied to the Bulgarians, this is why they kept electing me for years.

Boyko Borisov, GERB

I will speak out, you will see me, but you will hear the words of Mr Slavi Trifonov.

Toshko Yordanov, MP for the There Is Such a People party

Kiril Petkov would have had a long political career if he did not talk like this.

Russian Ambassador to Bulgaria Eleonora Mitrofanova

We already showed that we are not an outgoing government. The Bulgarian government and institutions are still in place and no one is above the law.

It's a spiral. They have entered a spiral. And it's very, very difficult to get out of that spiral.

Edi Rama, Prime Minister of Albania, on Bulgaria's stance on North Macedonia's EU membership application

GERB is a German shepherd that can do the job. Changes Continued are Chihuahuas. Everyone likes them, but they can't do the job.

Delyan Dobrev, MP for GERB

Even if you shut us down, organised crime will gladly welcome us.

Vilislava Angelova, judge at the Specialised Criminal Court

I used to think that in the general scheme of things truth does not matter.

General Prosecutor Ivan Geshev

Do not be afraid, Bulgarians. Inflation will only get worse.

Financial expert Mika Zaykova

As a Defence Minister I have no right of personal opinion.

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.

We have enough sunflower oil to drown the country.

Economy Minister Kornelia Ninova on rumours of sunflower oil shortages 

The ruling coalition is cracking along geopolitical lines.

Daniel Mitov, GERB

Borisov's claim that he would fix all current problems in a day is extremely brazen. Where was he in the past 10 years?

Prime Minister Kiril Petkov

Dudes, you are not gods.

Toshko Yordanov, MP for There Is Such a People, to GERB who wanted a longer vacation in December and January on religious grounds

Fulfilling all of our goals in the set timeframe will be hard, but we all realise that you can eat an elephant a bite at a time.

Prime Minister Kiril Petkov

I will ban the State Railway bosses from using government cars. Let them travel by train.

As the dust settles down after Bulgaria's third attempt in a year to elect a government and as the post-election horse-trading begins, there are several key conclusions to be drawn from Boyko Borisov's dramatic downfall and the emergence of the Changes Continued political party.

Polling agencies are not to be trusted.

Borisov's talk is the result of guilty hysteria because he is the reason for the ruinous state of the Bulgarian healthcare system. He had 12 years to reform it, to build a specialised paediatric hospital, to buy medical helicopters and to keep young doctors in Bulgaria.

Bulgarian President Rumen Radev

We are living in the experiment of a majority that does not believe in science.

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.

Some analysts were surprised, others were not: the 11 July snap election, called in the wake of the failure of Bulgaria's 45th National Assembly to set up a government, returned more or less the same results. Boyko Borisov's GERB continues to be a large and monolithic political party if led by an increasingly erratic strongman. It was pushed into the second place by a margin of less than a percent by Slavi Trifonov's ITN, or There Is Such a People, grouping. Third comes the beleaguered BSP, or Bulgarian Socialist Party.

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.

The month of June, officially the election campaign month ahead of the early ballot scheduled for 11 July, has been extraordinary even in the standard of Bulgarian politics. Hardly a day has passed without some major or minor scandal bursting out into the open. Mostly, these were caused by the revelations by the President Rumen Radev-appointed caretaker government of gross misdeeds committed by Boyko Borisov's GERB officials or by Boyko Borisov, this country strongman prime minister in 2009-2021, himself.

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:

Following the failure of Bulgaria's "short" parliament, which sat for less than a month, to fulfil its basic constitutional duty, form a functioning government, President Rumen Radev stepped in and appointed a caretaker administration. Though its main task is to organise the next general election, to be held on 11 July, the "caretaker" government is not as powerless as it seems. In fact, it can do everything a regular government is able to do save for actions – such as altering the state budget or concluding international treaties – that would require parliamentary approval.

Transparent elections will be possible only if Borisov's shadow state is dismantled.

Atanas Atanasov, Democrats for Strong Bulgaria

The criteria are problematic and should be revised. We are trying to create mechanisms to prevent this from happening in the future.

Atanas Pekanov, caretaker Deputy Prime Minister on the plan for Bulgaria's recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic prepared by Boyko Borisov's government

Most public opinion agencies got it wrong. Following a month of an exceptionally tepid (even in Bulgarian standards) election campaign, in which the coronavirus pandemic was hardly mentioned, Bulgarians went to the polls to elect their new parliament. The voter turnout was about 50 percent, which is about usual for Bulgarian elections. Bulgarians, contrary to what pollsters of all shapes and sizes had predicted, defied the coronavirus frenzy and went to cast their ballots in person, both in Bulgaria and abroad. They voted with their feet.