Sacking Interior Minister Roumen Petkov would not solve the problems faced by the ministry, even though he was not the best candidate to carry out much-needed reforms, Bulgarian political analysts said on April 9.

“It is not a matter of changing one minister, what is needed is a reform programme,” Georgi Karassimeonov from the Institute for Political and Legal Studies told reporters during a round-table discussion dedicated to the ongoing Interior Ministry controversy in the country.

Petkov was one of several top-level ministry officials in the alleged corruption row, which has been raging for nearly a month. He admitted meeting businessmen under investigation by police, but claimed that it was done in the best interest of the state.

Petkov was the “consummate transition period politician”, a product of the transition and closely related to the vicious system of institutions dependent on crime. Such politicians could not carry out reforms, Karassimeonov said.

Bulgaria had a real chance to push for reforms this time, as the pressure on it to act was harder. Karasimeonov said that the pressure from the European Union on Bulgaria to resolve its problems was giving results. “We would hardly cope with the situation alone,” he said. The people involved in the system have lived with the illusion that they would throw dust in the EU’s eyes and sooner or later the union would get tired of criticising.

Calling for resignations was an old, transition-period practice, which solved nothing, Petar-Emil Mitev from Ivan Hadjiyski Institute for Social Values and Structures said. On the other hand, “we cannot expect that the politically appointed capitalists [in the Interior Ministry] would act based on the assumption that the law is above everything.”

Sacking Petkov could be counter-productive even, as it would calm down the opposition, which is now calling for the minister's head, Antonii Todorov from the Bulgarian Association for Political Sciences said.

The only way Bulgarian authorities could clean up their image would be to carry out a campaign similar to the "mani puliti" (clean hands) nationwide investigations that revealed mass corruption in Italy in the 1990s.

However, Bulgarian society did not believe that there was anyone who could resolve the situation, Mitev said.

Because of the current situation, Bulgarian authorities were losing legitimacy with its own citizens, the EU and its allies, Karasimeonov said.

“Bulgaria lacks adequate national elites,” Ognyan Minchev from the Institute for Regional and International Studies said. On the other hand, the EU did not have the resource to achieve the results the Bulgarians expected. The bloc itself needed to reform the way it works, so it was up to the Bulgarian society to take matters into its hands, he said.

Until then, the status quo, in which the Interior Ministry served organised crime instead of fighting it, would remain unchallenged. "It is more than clear that mafia rules Bulgaria and the Interior Ministry is its co-ordination centre,” Minchev said. “We did not need a corruption row to show us that.”