Bulgarian politicians come up with a brilliant scheme to trick everyone

[Dalek]

A few weeks ago, Bulgaria's people finally stopped trying to force change by like-and-sharing funny pictures of politicians on Facebook and went out on the streets on massive protests. The reason was the high electricity prices, caused by the fact that the distribution of electricity is in the hands of Big Foreign Companies. The smell of rebellion was everywhere. And there was also the smell of fish, though no one really noticed it. Facebook activists were bursting with euphoria, spreading pictures of the massive marches. Sofia's police force clashed with protesters. Varna's police force was accepting flowers from them and declared that they support the protests


The protests escalated, with people singing old revolutionary folk songs, blocking main boulevards everyday etc. A few people felt the smell of fish. A journalist tried to expose what was happening in his TV show. A day later the TV show got canceled. No one noticed it. Everyone wanted to hear about how much the politicians had failed. Everyone wanted to hear pseudo-intellectual discussions on the events. Everyone wanted to hear about The Revolution and no one wanted to hear about how big of a scam this whole revolution is. Soon the Financial minister left the Parliament.  A day later Prime minister Boyko Borisov announced his resignation. The Revolution was successful after all. We had taken down the government. What's next? Nobody knew. All they knew was that they wanted change, no one could suggest a good direction. A bunch of folks from Vratsa proposed a new constitution, but their efforts produced a hilarious piece of shit, that seemed more appropriate for North Korea (proposing death penalty for everyone who disrespects Bulgaria loll).

Meanwhile Spas Spassov was the only journalist who was really exposing things for what they were  on his blog (he's a lot like a bulgarian Spider Jerusalem. Pretty awesome. But no one wanted to listen to him, because he was not praising The Revolution). So where was all of this fishy smell comming from?

Now, Russia has been trying to push natural gas here for quite a while and Bulgaria doesn't run on gas. It runs on electricity. And those European companies aren't helping. And Bulgaria's government has been gaining people's disapproval for quite a while. And surely a lot of the politicians that have been hoarding money for the last few years have grown tired of all the games, and have probably taken into account that they've stolen enough money to resign from politics and do their thing (Simeon Diankov, the minister of finance announced that he's starting a business in the US pretty soon after his resignation). And you can't just quit without doing some explaining. And you can't just impose state control on the foreign electricity companies out of nowhere. And you can't really expect people to trust you on election day after having cheated them for quite a long time.

So what do you do if you're a politician in the described situation? You organize a protest. Then you do all of the above to keep the people happy, against your own will of course. Everyone leaves with the money. The big players stay, only now they are lurking in the shadows, secretly pulling the strings on the new ones, that come, bringing hope for a brighter future.

And no one is gonna know, because people don't like to think of themselves as fools. They like to see themselves as revolutionaries. Builders of a brighter future.  So they'll read all of the articles, celebrating social change and criticizing the government, but they'll ignore everyone who implies that the revolution is a scam. A bit like Kony 2012. Boyko 2013 lol.

[Junkenstein]

Excellent post. More of this kind of thing.

In fact, A general plea - If you live anywhere that does not have English as a primary language, please feel free to throw up a quick post about the current domestic political situation where-ever you are.

I like reading them and I hope that's all the incentive you need.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Oh, wow.

[The Good Reverend Roger]

That's breath-taking in its insidiousness.

Holy crap.

[Dalek]

Considering how Russia is pulling the strings on most Bulgarian politicians (Boyko Borisov was the bodyguard of the Bulgarian soviet leader Todor Zhivkov so it's sure that he has KGB training) it's not really surprising. Russia is well known for being sleazy and doing shit like that.

[Golden Applesauce]

Crazy stuff. I should start paying attention to Bulgarian news (most of my company is located in Bulgaria.)

Suggestions for resources to get up to speed?

[East Coast Hustle]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for posting it!

[Telarus]

Thanks for the post. Very interesting.

[Dalek]

Some pretty interesting shit happened in the last few days and I'm going to make a post about it here soon.