Global heating craps Borisovs anti-crisis policy, but salvation might be imminent.

If you only will read three... eh... five words today, read these:

----The communists lost in Moldova----

If you've decided to read more, find the news on New York Times or the BBC .

The new government will have a lot to deal with, as do the new Bulgarian. And the biggest problems might not even be corruption...

In an earlier post I praised Bojko Borisov, Bulgarias new premier minister for putting agriculture on the agenda. Borisov stressed that employment in the agricultural sector is an important buffer in times of unemployment and the need to develop the Bulgarian countryside. It might be bullshit, but at least the guy has spotted an important problem.

One week the Bulgarian ministry of agriculture announced that the agriculture output in Bulgaria will be ca 20% lower in 2009 than in 2008, Noggers Blog reports. And it is not only Bulgaria...

Similar numbers are announced on marketskeptics . Argentina, Ukraine, the US, Russia... all report falling sales. Sometimes aggravated by bad politicians, but the main reason is one - heat and drought. Caused by climate change.


On marketskeptics you can see a nice graph of the sugar price hitting an all time high, so I guess food prices are set to get higher globally... but maybe we should be happy as long as there is something to eat.

As gloomy as these numbers sound, there is no reason to despair. I am sure most people who read this blog can easily consume 20% less in general. Myself I could easily eat 20% less if I had to. Maybe I should try it next week... to take a single hot dog in stead of a double, 33 cl of beer in stead of 50 cl...

Food is important. In the interconnected world it is very easy to forget that the coffe you drink actually come from a plantation, dependent on water and sun etc... Sometimes I feel the internet has only alienated us even further from this basic reality. That's why I was really happy to see the homepage of Smaka på Skåne.

Skåne is the southernmost region in Sweden, whereto I will soon move. If you write "potato" in the search field, you will get results where in Skåne you can buy potatoes produced on local farms. Food that has not travelled all over the world letting out CO2 and poison. It is just genius, a combination of internet technology and local farming.

This one is only in Swedis for obvious(?) reasons. But I guess it could be easily translated.

The picture is purely there for aestetical reasons, taken in Texas in 1955. It is taken from flickr, credits to austrini, found through creative commons

Elections in Moldova

For the second time this year, Moldovans went to the polls to elect their government. In April the communists won an election that was generally regarded as a fraud and the results were followed by massive and violent protests.

The communists were then one man short of the two thirds majoruty demanded to appoint the president, and new elections were necessarry.

The first results will be published 23:00 GMT+2. Hotnews.ro publishes exit polls that show an inverted situatuion. This time the opposition parties have the majority to form a government, but are short of the two thirds.... The man that can reslove the situation is called Marian Lupu, an economist former active in the Communist party that left after the scandalous first elections.

The opposition have been very sceptical of Lupu's move, saying that he did it to split the united front againts the communists. Time will tell, I guess...

The elections are said to have been generally calm, with a few ugly incidents, like communists shooting at opposition members in Sangera, and lots of cheating with the votes, as expected.

My guess is that the government will in deed change this time. Moldova is very dependent on a decent reputation in the West, without western NGO's, or Western funding for projects very little would happen in Moldova. I guess people with interests to lose might opt for Lupu as less provocing than Voronin, that made such a scandal last time.

Greetings Moldova! Things can only get better!

Source: www.hotnews.ro

Minister of extraordinary situations is arrested

The minister of extraoprdinary situations , Aleksander Filipov has been arrested early this morning, for vote-tradeing.

There have been many reports about trading with voices, about voters coming by bus from Turkey etc. Very rapid justice it seems.


Source: Dnevnik

Bulgarian election results

According to Darik the results are now:

GERB          116 deputies   Right wing populists
BSP              40 deputies   Bulgarian Socialists
DPS              38 deputies   Turkish minority party
Ataka            21 deputies   Extreme right wing
Blue Coalition 15 deputies   Liberal/right wing
RZS              10 deputies   Right wing populists (Law and order party, similar to the party with the same name in Poland)

GERB will invite the Blue coalition for diuscussions and I guess this is the most likely outcome. In any case, GERB will be the dominating power in Bulgaria in the years ahead.

Bulgaria votes

Bulgaria votes today. The first exit polls indicate a very strong result for GERB, who might be able to form a majority government.

I was with my girlfriend voting in Copenhagen in the morning, in the embassy with a very friendly atmosphere and lots of Danish Bulgarians present to vote. Now we areheading back for Bulgaria, and I expect lots of things to write about in the autumn :)

Why I voted green

In the elections I, like many other Swedish citizens, voted for the Swedish green party. Inspired by Neyioten blog, where I could read both why Svetle would not vote for zelenite, and why she would vote for Sinjata Koalitia, I will try to explain why.

I am brought up in a tradition of democratic socialism. Most of my life it has been an obvious choice to vote for left leaning parties, but I have lately come to doubt that left wings politics (eternal growth + solidarity) are possible at all. The decline of parties like UK Labour and the continuous lack of innovative left wing thinking has made me lose hope in the ledt. And there is globalisation... Left wing politics require regulations, and how do you regulate production in China? Or Africa.

So why not face the facts and vote for liberals or center right? Because I neither belive in any eternal growth. The oil will finish one day. Maybe next year, maybe after fifty. But if there is oil for fifty more years, oil- and car companies will make us live fifty more years as if it would last for ever. Liberals and center politicians are way to weak when it comes to defending nature against private exploitation.

There are other issues as well. Like deregulating healthcare and schools, and then expect them to run as if the state payed them. It is difficult to make money from teaching. Private schools work excellent when they can pick their pupils, christian, muslims, ultra-rich... but they are completely useless in granting things like citizen's right to education. I might be wrong, but the only thing I have personally seen from deregulations is that the state pays the expenses for morally dubious enterprises. Deragulation can not be the answer to everything. But it's the only answer I get from Europe's center and liberal politicians.

So... I voted green. Because I hope they can work for a policy that finally take into account that we live on a planet. Ihope also that they can drive a development towards a much more local society, where we consume things hat have been produced locally to a much higher degree than today...

It will of course be a challenge to blog from my localy produced computer, but anyway... :) My reflections in this blog refer to European politics in general, or Swedish. I was not eligible for choosing between Bulgarian parties, and I am aware that my choice might, or might not have looked different is i was.

Congrats, zelenite!

If these elections had been about European questions, all Bulgarian parties could be pleased with the results:

Zelenite didn't make it to Brussels, but got around 1%. Not bad for the first time. The Greens did a wonderful election in Europe, and have better representation than before. There are more opportunties for green politics in the European parliament than ever.

The blue coalition did a good election,

and GERB won decisively. They both participate in the European people's party group, that wond decisively over the socialists.

DPS, the Turkish minority party defended themselves well. In the EU parliament the belong to the same liberal group as NDSV, whose Meglena Kuneva made an excellent personal campaign.

The Bulgarian socialists held their stance better than most comrades in Europe, though. Much better than Gordon Brown, for example.

In addition to this EPP have claimed that they want to create a "big coalition" together with the liberals and the socialists, to deny the far right, green and far left groups any influence.

Lider, another populist party made a surpirsingly good election and are surely happy about that.


Ataka woud rejoice, not only about their own position as nr. 3 in Bulgaria, but over the much larger far right group in the EU parliament. And they will get at least as much money from the EU parliament as UK's BNP gets.



Not so... In Bulgaria, as everywhere else in Europe, the EU elections are nothing but a final rehersal ahead of the real, national elections. Quite rightly so, as the commission, representin the national governments still holds gar more power than the EU parliament.

I don't think anyone reard themselves as winners in Bulgaria yet. It's pretty much like in the pause between second and third period in ice hockey...

There have been claims about votes being bought and sold. The blue coalition and Lider wants the votes to be recounted.(I will not comment anything on this on this blog before anyone is sentenced, since it is a very serious allegation.)

Gerb is leading... but from here it can only go downwards.
The Socialists now know that they are weaker than Gerb. Time is running out for hanging that.
DPS might be able to produce a similar result in the national elections. But if the Socialists don't form the next government they are toast.
Zelenite.. I don't know what they think about the result yet. But the chance to enter the parliament in these elections look small.
If these results were national, the Blue Coalition might well govern with Gerb. I would not send Bojko Borisov to in meetings Europe. Martin Dimitrov has a much more European and delicate image that wouldn't cause any scandals in Brussels. But if the blue coalition wants to influence Gerbs poltics, they will wnat to take as many voters as possible - compared to Gerb.
Lider and NDSV must bet on a coalition with someone, but with whom?

I guess Ataka has the least to worry about. They are not allied with any one, and might end up with 10-15% in opposition. A dream position for right wing populists.

In the end - in politics everything can and will happen. Less than 50% voted in these elections, so there is plenty of room for surprises.

Democracy is coming...

Democracy is a strange thing, in deed. Svetla Dimitrova, head of the election authority ЦИКЕП (read TsIKEP), have written a letter to the Parliament, expressing her discontent with a statement from the parliament dating to the 13th of April.

The parliament was not pleased with ЦИКЕП's proposal to raise the barrier for coalitions to 8 %, and as I understand this is what this is about.

The parliament which is increasingly defiant since the third government party, the conservatives, tend to go against their coalition partners in the parliament, and rather vote with the parties in the blue coalition.

With an 8% barrier, the blue coalition would risk ending up outside the parliament. According to the last polls* I've seen the blue coalition have around 6%. Most analyst's sees this proposal as a try from the government to unduly use their legislative power agianst the opposition.

ЦИКЕП's decision was eventually faulted by the administrative court, which is the highest instance in this case.

One could quite easily see a pattern here: The government parties and certain authorities vs. the parliament, the local authorities in Sofia and the administrative court. the pattern i strinkingly similar to the situation in Republic of Moldova, but there the parliament is under control by the communist government.

For sure there are also business interests tied to the government, I would guess that there are interests tied to the opposition as well. The economedia group, which published the high class newspapers capital and Dnevnik, are very close to the blue alliance opposition.

Many bulgarians engaging in the politics expect some kind of silent revolution from the elections, by voting in new voices in the parliament. The defiant parliament is already now appearing as somehow less corrupted than the institutional establishment.

Now, the point of Svetla Dimitrova's letter is that ЦИКЕП is the responsible authority in this case, and that it is not the parlimentary majority's role to mix up in her work... this is a point that can be argued I think.

The Bulgarian constitution prescribes a very high degree of independence for different institutions, much higher than in Sweden for example. Much critique has ben aimed at the juridical system, but in fact the Bulgarian politicians have very small power to change anything, since they are banned form interfering with the courts.

In this case one democratic principle - the power comes from the elected parliament is ocunteracted by another principle, fundamental to liberal democracy - the independence of courts and other instutions. Democracy is a complex thing. In deed.