Pundits and pollsters were at play as Bulgarian Prime Minister Borissov’s Cabinet, and the Parliament which his party dominates, reached their first year in office.
 
The opinion polls and the interpretations drawn from them were mixed, in part because not every polling agency in the country is seen as free of bias, nor as keeping to the same standards that would enable a fair basis for comparison.

The National Centre for the Study of Public Opinion said Borissov had a 62 per cent approval rating, meaning that by the centre’s measure he had lost seven per cent since his July 2009 election victory, and said that 44 per cent of those polled deemed Borissov’s Government to have been successful in its first year.

Mediana agency said that in the past year, confidence that Borissov’s party GERB would make Bulgaria a better place to live in had fallen from 43 per cent to 33 per cent.

As reported by mass-circulation daily 24 Chassa, Vassil Tonchev of Sova Harris said that the number of people who disapproved of the Government had increased, but the political landscape currently offered no alternative to the Borissov Government.
 
Crime and… punishment?
Grudgingly, Sergei Stanishev, leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and Borissov’s vanquished predecessor as prime minister, said that it was in fighting crime that the Government had achieved its only successes.

There was an ironic tinge to that, given that the moves made by Borissov to get Stanishev into the dock for allegedly mishandling secret documents while in office were about to bear fruit. In being ushered into court, Stanishev would share the fate of some others who formerly had offices in the Cabinet buildings, among them two former defence ministers.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which around July 2009 had been portrayed by Borissov as his arch political enemy and has scant reason to applaud the current Government’s prosecutorial pursuit of its predecessors said that "criminals had had their feathers ruffled," in the words of MRF deputy chairperson Lyutvi Mestan.

Borissov’s Government has not directed its attention solely to those outside his party. Bozhidar Nanev had to resign from the GERB Government after allegations that contracts that he had signed as health minister were criminally disadvantageous.

Talk of crime-fighting, however, is more likely to conjure up in the popular imagination those many scenes of dramatic arrests, parts of police operations that had names ranging from the mildly lyrical ("Octopus") to the leaden and literal ("Pimps", "Borders"). The polls said that the public listed crime-fighting as the leading achievement of Borissov’s first year in office.

There were even a few guilty verdicts and sentences: Mario Nikolov, for one, although it seemed that the Margin Brothers, for the moment, should be ruled out from the list of those destined for a one-way ticket for a jail cell.
 
It’s the economy…
It was not solely on a promise to fight crime that Borissov, who at one time was the top official in the Interior Ministry, was elected. The summer of 2009 saw the heat of the economic crisis and the stifling of EU funds amid suspicions of widespread corruption and other abuses.

In interviews to mark his first year in office, Borissov made much of his Government having made it possible for the EU to restore the flow of funds from Brussels. On the economy, and on solutions to the crisis, he has less credit to draw on.

Veteran right-wing politician Ivan Kostov, a former finance minister and former prime minister whose Democrats for a Strong Bulgaria has a publicly ambivalent relationship with the Government, was scathing about the Borissov administration being ineffectual in the face of the economic crisis. There was, Kostov told mass-circulation daily Trud, "no courage, no resolve…no competence either".

It was a direct reference to the Government having appeared to vacillate as it trotted out various anti-crisis measures, only to backtrack swiftly when faced with public opprobrium. The talk of increasing value-added tax is a case in point. At one point, Bulgaria was going to get a third Cabinet minister, supposedly with the rank of deputy prime minister, to strengthen the economic and finance efforts; when controversy ensued, the plan – and the man – were dropped.

Hardly surprisingly, a year after the July 2009 national parliamentary elections, unemployment and other economic indicators had worsened as the great leviathan of the economic crisis continued to bug all key sectors of the economy (allowing for the fact that in some cases, notably the tourism industry and property market, at least some of the grievous wounds were self-inflicted).
 
In your pipe
Moscow media reports after Borissov’s impromptu meeting with Vladimir Putin early in the GERB government’s term made it clear that the Russian prime minister had not liked the behaviour of his Bulgarian counterpart (cynics suggested that Russian leaders were not used to Bulgarian leaders behaving like counterparts).

Belene and the Bourgas-Alexandroupolis pipeline project provided endless fuel for a complicated saga of off-again, on-again signals about precisely what it was that the Government in Sofia intended doing about its future energy policy. As Borissov’s first year came to close, the US ambassador, James Warlick, joined in asking for clarity. Perhaps not coincidentally, the natural gas saga on its own, specifically the deal made with Gazprom by the previous government, provided media embarrassment for former economy minister Roumen Ovcharov, a socialist strongman.
 
And smoke it
Excises on tobacco went up, damaging legal sales of tobacco products and allegedly boosting the contraband trade, but apparently doing no lasting harm to Borissov’s popularity, unless disgruntled smokers account for those lost percentage points in the Prime Minister’s poll performance.

As noted, Bulgaria was told value-added tax would not go up, and the lengthy lists that emanated from the Government-private sector-trades union meetings were not matched by implementation of the full list of measures cooked up there (there is a chance that history may show this to be a good thing).

Simeon Dyankov, the Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister who at times appeared to be on the politically endangered list, took up the habit of issuing assurances that recovery was on the way or, if the figures were interpreted, already had started. Unfortunately for anyone in his position, experience of recent months in the EU and in South Eastern Europe in particular regarding the credibility of official figures was not on his side.

Nonetheless, Dyankov insisted in an interview with 24 Chassa that people should be spending, because they should have no fear that the tax burden would be worsened. "We are not going to touch wages, pensions and taxes," Dyankov was quoted as saying. He told Bulgarian National Television that the deficit in 2011 would be less than 2.65 per cent of GDP (Bulgaria currently is on the long list of countries subjected to the EU’s excessive deficit procedure) and said that next year the economy would grow three per cent. Nor were there negotiations with the IMF, nor would there be, Dyankov said.

"We are doing well and will come out of the crisis without (IMF) help," he said.
 
Bulgaria abroad
Taking over after what arguably should rank as the biggest backfire of any of Borissov’s first Cabinet appointments, the Roumyana Zheleva saga, Foreign Minister Nikolai Mladenov leapt into the top ranks of the popularity polls, perhaps for his actions in carving a place for Bulgaria in EU foreign policy (and for the fact that this was one area where the Government did not squabble with President Georgi Purvanov).

Mladenov’s stature was enhanced by his background of expertise in Middle East affairs, and for keeping a calm hand on those hissing valves that often threaten scalding steam, notably issues such as Bulgaria’s bilateral relations with Macedonia.
 
Bulgaria at home
Summing up Borissov Year One, Bulgarian-language weekly Kapital said that the Government retained public support, even though this was hardly uncritical.

The paper criticised the Government’s "hesitant" response to the economic crisis and said that in a number of areas, not even the first step towards the promised sweeping changes had been taken. In government, GERB gave a sense of the correct direction in which Bulgaria should move; but it remained to be seen whether Bulgaria would start moving in that direction, the paper said.