Boyko Borisov

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.

GERB are tired of ruling and the people are tired of being ruled by GERB.

Mihail Mikov, MP from BSP

Your mission is to revive parliamentary democracy in this country.

President Rumen Radev addresses the new parliament

PCR tests should be much cheaper, but this is what you get when healthcare becomes a business.

Professor Todor Kantardzhiev

We have ordered enough vaccines for two Bulgarias.

One of the topics debated in what was an exceptionally tepid election campaign was how Bulgarians abroad should be enabled to vote. Bulgarians, like the French and the Italians but unlike the Danes and the Irish, can vote in general elections regardless of their permanent place of abode.

No idea what the prime minister meant. Development of a Bulgarian Covid-19 vaccine is in its early stages.

Dr Angel Kunchev, Chief Health Inspector

A large facility indeed, but it will make veterinary vaccines... that have nothing to do with Covid-19.

Academic Bogdan Petrunov, immunologist

In Bulgaria freedom of speech is so free (sic) that it is incomparable to that in other countries.

Prime Minister Boyko Borisov

Some media try to represent the upcoming election as a titanic battle of a major anti-Communist, pro-democracy and pro-Western establishment (Boyko Borisov's GERB) and a renegade leftist party (BSP, or Bulgarian Socialist Party) that stems from the erstwhile Bulgarian Communist Party, the one that ruled Communist Bulgaria with an iron fist in 1944-1989. In fact, if opinion polls are anything to go by, GERB and BSP are almost equal in size, with the GERB sometimes emerging ahead by a few percentage points, and vice versa. Significantly, neither GERB nor the BSP are particularly large.

The picture, in oil, executed in the best (or worst) traditions of late Socialist Realism was immediately picked up by social media users. They were quick to come up with their own variants, ridiculing Bulgaria's Borisov whose authoritarian methods they claim increasingly resemble those of his Communist-era predecessors.

The Bulgarian Council of Ministers sent out a press release that the picture in question was one of a series of artworks commissioned by Arkad Engineering & Construction, the Saudi Arabian contractor for the pipeline project.

The peak of the pandmeic will come just ahead of the 4 April general election.

Chief State Health Inspector Angel Kunchev

The prime minister is a man who puts down all fires in Bulgaria.

Nasko Sirakov, owner of Levski football club, on his request for state funding of new construction on the club's stadium

The world looks different when one's onboard Boyko Borisov's 4WD.

In the implementation of the Covid-19 measures you will see the total power of the state.

Health Minister Kostadin Angelov

They marked the 40th anniversary of dictator Tito's death. It's as if Berlin were to mark the anniversary of Hitler's expiry.

Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva in an attempt to explain Bulgaria's suspension of North Macedonia's bid to join the EU

The tweeting machine is set in motion, slamming anyone the president for reasons that will probably remain a mystery forever considers a "hater" and a "loser."

I am so powerful I can stand in for a snow plough.

Heavyweight boxer Kubrat Pulev before his 12 December match with Anthony Joshua

In short, I am a patriotic Christian Socialist.

Chief Prosecutor Ivan Geshev

The (North) Macedonians' megalomania is a proof of their Bulgarian origin.

Professor of history Andrey Pantev 

"If they dislike Boyko Borisov's highways and underground, let them walk."

GERB Speaker of Parliament Tsveta Karayancheva

"Many journalists believe that they should be untouchable."

Betina Zhoteva, chairwoman of the Electronic Media Council

"GERB consists of women only. Even the few men in the party are women."

Prime Minister Boyko Borisov on equality

The danger comes when a sheep flock decides to become a wolf pack. Then comes the time for the shepherd to raise his stick and force the flock back into the pen.

Valentin Kasabov, MP for National Front for Salvation of Bulgaria, about the antigovernment protests

Borisov behaves like a karate player at a chess game. You move the figures and he kicks the board.

Slavi Trifonov, TV anchor and leader of the There is Such a People party

Things in Bulgaria are rarely what they seem to be, but of course there are exceptions. Look at Boyko Borisov's government and his most loyal GERB-ers. Look at the pictures of the prime minister sleeping across his bed, wads of 500-euro bills in his bedside drawer and a gun positioned by his head.

Yet few expected something as dramatic as that: iPhone snaps of a half-naked prime minister sleeping across his bed, a bedside cupboard full of wads of 500-euro bills. Plus several gold ingots. Plus his favourite gun positioned on top. The images, anonymously sent to several media and subsequently widely circulated to the general public, might have befitted an underworld boss after an orgy of booze, sex and gambling rather than the prime minister of an EU member state. But photos do not lie. Welcome to the bedroom of Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.

Boyko Borisov, Bulgaria's prime minister during the past 11 years, may have many faults, his critics say, but he is without a doubt a master of the Bulgarian language. Borisov's virtuoso use of the lingo plays on many levels. His uncouth nativism enchants some domestic audiences, especially cab drivers and horsecart repairers. At the same time his obsequious promises of police cooperation endears his Western counterparts.

The reduced VAT on baby food will, pray God, stimulate people to have more children.

Economy Minister Emil Karanikolov

The General Prosecution Office's reluctance to take in the many flagrant scandals and signals for huge corruption and theft of public money is a sign of fear and dependencies.

President Rumen Radev

Democracy is for disciplined people.

Prime Minister Boyko Borisov

Predictably, the coronavirus emergency has made all other events in what remains the EU's poorest and least free state look like insubstantial tidbits. With very few exceptions all media have focused exclusively on the alarmist press conferences of Gen Ventsislav Mutafchiyski, the military doctor who heads the emergency staff, and on the lifts Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has given to his ministers in his private jeep to inspect unfinished stretches of road.

The Prime Minister told me: 'If I were a woman, I would knock it off with you'.

Epidemiologist Dr Atanas Mangarov, who has opposed the lockdown measures

Culture is a whim of luxury. When the world has stopped working, how can we be concerned with culture?

Vezhdi Rashidov, former GERB culture minister

You have the rare chance to be governed by us. Under President Radev, people would have been dying.

Since 13 March 2020 Bulgaria has been run by three generals and a sheriff. First and foremost comes General Ventsislav Mutafchiyski. A surgeon installed to manage the Military Medical Academy in Sofia, Mutafchiyski rose to prominence when he was appointed the head of the emergency National Operative Headquarters. Neither a virologist, nor a psychologist he is seen at daily news briefings where he utilises his military schooling to give out what is in essence increasingly restrictive commands to ban citizens from moving about and gathering together.

Political science students all over the world are being taught in the early stages of their studies that the best way for an authoritarian government – any authoritarian government – to enhance its own powers is to use a crisis – any crisis – as a justification. The bigger the crisis, the bigger the opportunity. At a time of a huge crisis it becomes easier to take away citizens freedoms and rights not only with a couple of decrees, but also with the general public applauding from the sidelines.