At the backdrop of ongoing drama in Bulgarian healthcare, energy, education and many other sectors, unprecedented scandals shook hard all elements of the national transport system. Road, air, rail, international and public transport did not remain unaffected by the unbelievable corruption and financial scandals. One wonders how Transport Minister Ivaylo Moskovski and Prime Minister Boyko Borissov manage to hold their nerves.

In fact, everything started last year, but the storm began to set on the horizon in early 2016. Without much explanations and arguments to convince motorists, prices of vignette stickers rose by as much as 48% and the annual road tax reached the equivalent of a monthly social pension or nearly 50 euros. The 20,000-km road network in the country is in miserable condition, and there are places where passing without risking damaging your car or putting your life in danger is impossible. Despite the road tax hike, authorities did not even promise to make more substantial improvements to the road network this year. That is why angry drivers wonder why the price was raised so much. Many chose not to buy vignettes and prefer to take the risk of getting fined by the police if they ever got stopped.

Especially sensitive to the ongoing “road war” in Bulgaria and the great number of accidents, the Bulgarian society was shaken by revelations of how the State Transport Administration was closing its eyes on cheating at driver’s exams. Greed and corruption have allowed potential killers on the road, NGOs and citizens warned. The authorities allegedly started a detailed check on more than 200 protocols for successfully taken exams. The results are still unknown but every day in Bulgaria road police catches people who have never tried to study the rules and are still driving cars.

Something similar has been revealed in the civil aviation sector. It turned out that several private companies and pilots – some of them even flying government aircraft, did not have the necessary qualification and documents to prove it. Not just that, but the very inspectors of the state administration who were supposed to check the documents of companies and pilots also did not meet the requirements for competence and qualifications. That is why the head of this administration was quickly fired.

The same happened to the Sofia Deputy Mayor for Transport and the head of the public transport after a television showed they were involved in a corruption scandal. Before that the two officials managed to provoke the fierce anger of the largest city in Bulgaria with a striking decision for a whopping 60-percent rise of the price of tickets for all kinds of public transport. A month remains until the scandalous decision enters into force and many now hope it will be reviewed in the light of reason and after the chief ideologues of the price hike were fired. An MP from the ruling party also followed them as she also turned out to be involved in the corruption scheme.

Hopes for revision are even stronger keeping in mind the rich experience in this direction. In the winter Bulgaria suffered from a two-month blockade of the border by protesting Greek farmers. Bulgarian international carriers have decided to have their revenge by blocking the border during the upcoming Orthodox Easter holidays and thus stopping the movement of Bulgarian and Greek tourists in both directions. This made tourism business horrified and placed under pressure Prime Minister Boyko Borissov who personally persuaded truck drivers not to close the border during the upcoming holidays.

Now let’s take a look at bus companies facing the introduction of a toll system, which they consider to be crushing in terms of prices and costs. With an impressive procession of over 100 buses downtown Sofia they protested and suggested that this would be just the beginning if no action was taken.

To all the misfortunes of Bulgarian transport one should add the persistent crisis in the railways. It has become so trivial that no one pays much attention to the almost daily media reports about derailed trains or locomotives that burned in fire. Thank God that not every accident is accompanied by casualties and victims.

The mess in the entire Bulgarian transport sector is an illustration of a number of problems. One of them, however, is particularly important - it seems that corruption is king in every public sector in this country. It seems that the scale of this criminal phenomenon has made head of the ruling GERB party and Prime Minister Boyko Borissov scared. Just days ago during the national conference of his party PM Borissov warned that corrupt party members would face ruthless punishments.

English: Alexander Markov