Outgoing PM Denkov: Peevski is the biggest evil happening to Bulgaria
Outgoing Prime Minister Nikolai Denkov, in an interview on April 4, described Movement for Rights and Freedoms co-leader Delyan Peevski as “currently the biggest evil that is happening to Bulgaria”.
“In fact, he wanted elections and we are going to elections because of him,” Denkov said in an interview streamed on Facebook.
Denkov’s government may be in office just a few more days, as caretaker Prime Minister-designate Dimitar Glavchev has been given the task of proposing a caretaker government as Bulgaria heads to early parliamentary elections, the date of which is not yet clear.
This follows the failure to succeed in negotiations on what had been planned as a “rotation”, meant to have seen GERB-UDF’s Maria Gabriel take office as Prime Minister after We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria’s Denkov had held the post for nine months. Denkov tabled his resignation on March 5, and it was approved by Parliament on March 6. Subsequent talks between GERB-UDF and WCC-DB produced nothing but recriminations, putting the country on to yet another early parliamentary election.
Denkov said that the “rotation” had not taken place precisely because of the lack of will for the positive changes to continue.
He said that his government had had an agenda that managed to move many reforms.
“It is important for Bulgaria to continue on the European path of development. Let it not turn out that we deviated from the important reforms,” he said.
“The rotation failed because someone wanted elections and it’s not us,” Denkov said.
“Mr. Peevski is currently the biggest evil that is happening to Bulgaria. And in fact, a large part of the problems that we see are precisely because he began to command the processes, he began to command GERB. In fact, he wanted elections and we are going to elections because of him. The problem of Bulgaria today is called Delyan Peevski.”
He expressed concerns about whether the caretaker government would be able to organise fair elections.
Bulgarian National Television reported Peevski as responding on April 4 by describing Denkov as “the weakest Prime Minister in the history of Bulgaria”.
In June 2021, the United States placed sanctions on Peevski under the Magnitsky Act for what the US described as his extensive role in corruption in Bulgaria.
The United Kingdom followed suit in February 2023. A statement by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office alleged that Peevski had been involved in attempts to exert control over key institutions and sectors in Bulgarian society through bribery and use of his media empire.
On February 24 2024, Peevski was elected co-leader of the MRF.
The Denkov government took office in June 2023 as a result of an agreement between Boiko Borissov’s GERB-UDF and WCC-DB. Those two groups, along with the MRF, were described as the “assemblage” that acted as an informal ruling majority.
(Photo of Denkov via the Cabinet’s Facebook page)
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