issue 84 november 2007 Economy: State Budget 2008; Foreign Investments; Energy Sector Amcham news: The start of meet-the- new-members Event Series Analysis: Turkey and the Kurds; Foreign Investment: New Capitals Flow American Chamber of Commerce in Bulgaria Business Park Sofia, Mladost 4 Area, Building 2, Floor 6, 1766 Sofia Tel.: (359 2) 9742 743 Fax: (359 2) 9742 741 homepage: www.amcham.bg e-mail:
[email protected] editorial Dear Reader, You will probably notice that in this issue of AmCham Bulgaria Magazine we are not offering you an article on the 2007 mayoral elections, as we had promised last month when we introduced the main candidates. I am almost certain that you would not have noticed this absence, had I not mentioned it, and the reason is that the elections went by in a completely predictable fashion. Boyko Borisov, the leader of the newly formed GERB party, won in Sofia, and his associates took Plovdiv, Bourgas, Vidin, Dobrich, Stara Zagora, Yambol and Sliven. The ruling BSP got only Blagoevgrad, Varna, Lovech, Pernik and Smolian. The "democratic forces" - or what remains of them - got a mayor in Pleven only. In other words, a little over one-third of Bulgarian voters went to the polls and gave almost the entire local power to the former secretary of the Ministry of the Interior. Boyko Borisov himself - or "the General" as he is known for some reason - immediately declared that this is a harbinger of early parliamentary elections. We at AmCham Bulgaria Magazine think that the former policeman should be left to rule in Sofia, the former soccer star Yordan Lechkov, and all their GERB colleagues - where voters put them.