Bulgaria’s candidate third deputy prime minister named
Economist Daniela Bobeva is to be nominated as the third deputy prime minister in the current Bulgarian Socialist Party government, to oversee policies on the economy, foreign investments, e-government and administrative services for business and individuals.
The nomination of Bobeva (54) was announced on June 25 by Plamen Oresharski, who was appointed in May to occupy the prime minister’s chair in the government supported by the BSP, Movement for Rights and Freedoms and Ataka.
Sofia-born Bobeva is a director of central Bulgarian National Bank, a university associate professor and was trade minister in the Stefan Sofiyanski caretaker cabinet in 1997, which was appointed when the socialist government of the time collapsed amid mass protests because of the financial and economic disaster into which it had led Bulgaria.
Bobeva has been employed by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and the ministry of social affairs, was vice president of the Black Sea Bank, director of the economic programme at the Center for the Study of Democracy, director of the international cooperation directorate at BNB.
In 2001, she was a founder member of Sofiyanski’s right-wing Union of Free Democrats party.
When the BSP government came to power in May, it had just one deputy prime minister, the justice minister who also was appointed to oversee the use of EU funds. Plans are for the second deputy prime minister, when appointed, to combine that portfolio with the interior ministry and be in charge of security and intelligence portfolios.
The current government has been the subject of public protests that have drawn many thousands of Bulgarians to the streets of Sofia and other major cities and towns, demanding that the government step down because of a number of blunders that have dealt severe damage to the already record-low level of public confidence in it.
(Photo, of protesters outside the Cabinet office in Sofia: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
