Let’s stop the shame!

January, 2010

  1. Let’s stop the shame!

    January 12, 2010 by Christopher Buxton

    Bulgarian newspapers devote their front pages to a murdered “Radio Journalist” Bobby Tsankov. In addition to operating money raising scams on his Radio show, Tsankov pretended to know everything there was to know about the Bulgarian underworld.

    He died not far from the late lamented Ministry of Extraordinary Situations.

    He was shot in his favourite location – close to the lawyer’s offices where gangsters with colourful names flock. In the smoke filled rooms above the pavement where he fell the best legal minds grapple with the very simple task of ensuring that gangsters seldom face justice.

    His death proves an important adage: You can be a con-man or a fantasist. It is inadvisable to be both at the same time.

    And in Burgas locals are complaining about the shortcomings of the legal system. Amazingly after Judges and Prosecutors voted themselves a well deserved pay rise, doubts are still being raised about the speed and efficacy of delivering justice, protecting the weak and curbing the strong.

    Nearly twelve years after the death of two people on the Burgas-Sozopol Road, the trial of football boss, Ivailo Drazhev has been put off for the fiftieth time. The latest reason offered is that one of the judges is “unwell.”

    Not surprisingly Drazhev was a candidate in this summer’s elections. He diverted some money from his defence fund to print out thousands of posters with the slogan Let’s stop the shame!
    Although he probably got his mum to vote for him, his campaign was not really motivated by a desire to serve his fellow citizens.

    An extraordinary misunderstanding of European Civil Rights legislation has afforded temporary immunity from prosecution to anyone standing for election.

    Meanwhile our own judicial struggle with football and Petrol boss, Mitko Subev drags on. Subev persists in his apparent desire to knock down a perfectly sound building in order to deprive my pensioner mother-in-law of the rents that she relies on to survive. We have been waiting for the latest court decision for a year now.