The drama around Bulgaria’s State Agency for National Security and former prime minister Sergei Stanishev is playing to the full advantage of Prime Minister Boiko Borissov.

The allegations by the agency’s former deputy head, Ivan Drashkov, in a television interview on October 28 were that the agency was mired in chaos, and worse, some employees were little better than an organised crime group, seeking to blackmail reputable business people.

Even better for the current Government, the media was served up the spectacle of Stanishev arriving at the prosecutors’ office in connection with alleged leaking of classified information.

Coming after evidence of profligate spending by Stanishev’s cabinet, along with other intimations of alleged wrongdoing by ministers in the previous administration, it is little wonder that Stanishev and his party continue to lose in opinion polls, to the benefit of Borissov’s party.

Further, all that has emerged about the dire state of the State Agency for National Security, and its portrayal by Borissov and his lieutenants as a political police, strengthens his hand in seeking to cut the agency down to a think-tank in effect subordinate to the Interior Ministry, while the latter is built up as a key core of power in the new administration.

Of course, what the European Union and all of Bulgaria’s friends want to see is effective law enforcement, meaning effective action against crime and corruption, and if the creation of a powerful Interior Ministry at the expense of a Stanishev-era pet project that has failed is what it takes, all will applaud Borissov – but again, only if results are seen.

At the same time, appearances are that the failings of the previous government are part of the problem that has allowed organised crime to be endemic in Bulgaria. If indeed anyone from the previous administration may be prosecuted in this regard, few in Bulgaria and no one in other European capitals would have the slightest sympathy.
But most of all, those in Bulgaria who really want the country rid of organised crime long for a firm crackdown, with no time wasted on games geared to partisan political advantage.