Politicians Come to Think of Us Only When Elections are Close

Another mandate is over, another year is passing by. New elections are coming. Old politicians are here, as always.

Bulgaria, late October 2011. Two types of elections are coming – presidential and municipal elections. All is set up, election campaigns begin soon as well as the huge expenses that come with the territory. Wrong money for the wrong people. The country is on the edge of a financial collapse, but every time these campaigns are paid by the taxpayers and the budget, no matter everybody says donations are the major source of funding.

On top of all, the two elections are planned to take place in one day, which ostensibly aims to save money, but actually become even more expensive trying to organize everything at once. Unfortunately the present President George Parvanov fulfulled his two mandates and will not take part in the race. I’m saying unfortunately, because, even though he represented the former Communist party, he successfully managed to unite the nation in diffucult times and during severe ordeals, without being biased at all. The new candidates seem faceless, pretending to be responsible and somehow overestimating their personal and professional abilites and qualities. Well, it’s true, that in a parlamentary state the Presidential position is not the greatest one and it’s not the President who makes all the decisions but it certainly should not minimize the importance of the position, not to mention the candidates and their professional and personal qualities. So far not even one of the candidates fits the required profile, except maybe for one strong figure: the present Minister of Regional Development and Public Works, Rosen Plevneliev – a man of responsibility, kept promises,dignity and a high degree of approval at all society levels. Rosen Plevneliev
Municipal elections are very important since virtually the mayors and their deputies make the calls on all levels. But the situation here is even worse – almost in all regions there are no new faces, the present mayors and their teams are candidates again. What to say… What annoyed me the other day is this – while I was out with my daughter in the front yard of our block of flats so that she can play with the other kids, some representatives of the mayor went through all the entrances of the block and asked various questions under the form of sociological research – what we like or don’t like about the local government, which party we’d like to win the elections, do we approve local government’s programs, what needs to be done, etc. Of course, I answered everything especially on what needs to be done – 1) more than 150 000 people live in our neighborhood, but there are only TWO ! nurseries! Parents literally fight to get their children in the nursery, sometimes they give bribes; 2) all the cars park on the sidewalks and on the platforms for baby strollers and mothers have no choice but walk the strollers on the lanes; 3) holes in the streets, no benches in the parks… no, actually NO PARKS where kids can play… the list I made for the mayor representatives was more than 20 points long. And the last point was that such sociological researches should not be made ONLY when elections are coming but at least once a trimester. Eventually we are the ones who live here and pay politicians’ salaries and politicians are our representatives, respectivelly they have to be interested in what our needs are and what needs to be done for the purposes of general improval of our existence. But for this to happen – they simply should ask us.