Bulgaria's 'class war'
On Tuesday the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, witnessed a night of violence. After 40 days of protest the National Assembly was besieged amid demands that the government resign, and police stormed the peaceful crowd. A bus full of MPs trying to get away was surrounded and its windows broken, and scores of people were wounded. The next day Mihail Mikov, chair of parliament, said that "looking for solutions within the constitution becomes increasingly difficult".
A brief look back can explain why. The collapse of Bulgaria's centre-right government in February following protests against rising electricity bills led to early elections in May. These produced a coalition of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the Movement for Rights and Liberties – the party supported by the Turkish minority in Bulgaria – under the prime minister, Plamen Oresharski.… Seguir leyendo »