At an extraordinary press conference held at the Bulgarian News Agency’s regional office in Pazardzhik, leading figures of the political party Velichie delivered a stark assessment of Bulgaria’s electoral climate, framing the deployment of a full-scale international observation mission by the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) as an unmistakable sign of systemic democratic distress.

When one begins to write about a certain leader, memories of one's youth and one's teachers suddenly come to one's mind. Why? Because teachers carry within themselves the experience of their worldview and their school; they always "photograph" their pets. My political teacher, the veterinary technician Atanas Minchev from the village of Zmeyovo, often said: "You will look at the image of Churchill without paying attention to the style, and the style of John Kennedy is ideal, but it is in huge contradiction with those who rule America!".