The Bulgarian cabinet has spent the past three days with no healthcare minister after the resignation of Dr. Nikolay Petrov. There was no official explanation for the reason why PM Borissov accepted it, but the public began to believe that it was all due to a TV story on illegal contracting to the tune of some EUR 800,000 with a company, represented by an entrepreneur who was actually the partner of the minister’s daughter. The story had been well known yet at the assignment of the minister and it was obviously neglected probably due to the same reasons which didn’t allow the Sofia district military prosecution to start pretrial proceedings on the case, as no indications of a crime were found. However, the military appellate prosecution is now taking over the case after the minister’s resignation. The case is in the hands of the Sofia district military prosecution, as by the time these contracts were made, Dr. Petrov was head of the Sofia-based Military Medical Academy, that being prior to his appointment as Minister of Healthcare.

In the meantime the public was flooded with positive assessments of the now ex-minister. The doctors’ guild had got impressed by his openness to dialogue and also that he became the first healthcare minister ever to convince the financial one that the sector budget needed significant increasing. At the same time Petrov didn’t start his term by rejecting everything previously done, the way his predecessors had done. Certain circles of experts and several political analysts assumed that the replacement of Nikolay Petrov came as a result of someone’s interests having been affected.

No matter what the actual reasons for the resignation might be those won’t litigate the fact that the sector has been perhaps the most vulnerable one within any government for many years. Bulgaria has had 22 healthcare ministers since the beginning of the democracy transition process. With the exception of the caretaker cabinets, only two governments didn’t replace a healthcare minister /the socialist one of Jean Videnov and the Borissov 2 cabinet/, but they both didn’t complete their full term. The replacement of Nikolay Petrov is the first personal reshuffle within the Borissov 3 cabinet, but the first government of Boyko Borissov remained in history with a total of 4 ministers on that position.

Statistics shows clearly that the sector has a seriously high level of problems, especially now when the resignation coincided with the debate of the 2018 state budget. The arguments on the constant lack of sufficient financing will get stronger too. The draft budget for next year envisages an increase in healthcare money by EUR 250 mln. However, the debate is approached with deficit of political trust to the sector’s management. Thus one gets the feeling that the replacement of the healthcare minister is not a matter of corruption, but a sort of diagnosis of the healthcare reform’s current state – unsatisfactory, argued, subject of backstage interests.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev