The performance of Prime Minister Boiko Borissov’s Government in moving against people and actions linked to the previous government is a classic illustration of the adage that new brooms sweep clean.

Office-bearers inherited from the old order have been fired and replaced, deathbed appointments reversed, questionable deals and alleged perpetrators handed over to prosecutors, files and records opened for public scrutiny, wasteful spending cancelled, populist measures such as taxpayer-funded holidays for pensioners revoked and, where there is no paper trail and no specific villain, the actions of those who have gone before simply subjected to public ridicule.

Provided that those matters that have been handed to prosecutors result in successful convictions, there will be a degree of satisfaction for those who long suspected that not all was above board.

Further and perhaps not uncoincidentally, there is the political benefit that those who previously were in office will be severely discredited in the run-up to future elections. It is understandable (and that is not an expression of sympathy) that the now-defunct group of ministers feels that they are being witch-hunted, and that within their ranks, so it is reported, there is frustration that they have no strategy for defence against the onslaught.

While it is praiseworthy that the new Government is satisfying a public need for those who have been profligate with the public purse to be pursued vigorously, it is also true that the new rulers were not put into office solely to be a collective Witchfinder-General against those that the voters chose to oust.

There are other serious priorities about which expectations are high – in no particular order, Budget revision, amendments to the Penal Code and the amnesty law, and putting into place the recommendations of the most recent European Commission report on Bulgaria’s performance in getting justice and home affairs up to standard. It is trite to mention that all of this must be done in the context of a serious economic crisis of which the last and most serious wave probably has not yet rolled through Bulgaria.

However worthwhile the exercise of pursuing their predecessors, the new Government may soon find that the public and media will tire of the spectacle and start to ask to see the benefits of the change that they have supported. It is heartening to hear Borissov say, as he did in respect of the Interior Ministry, that he wants to hear the past and not the future tense used – "we have arrested" rather than "we will arrest". If this principle is applied to all priority areas, the goodwill his Government enjoys will continue to flourish.