Students on the barricades

FOR several hours on October 30th, Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court, the highest judiciary body in the country, was being auctioned on eBay. Before the site took it down, the unusual item was described as “not functioning as intended and not fully operational”.  According to the ad, the item would be most useful for mafia members, kingpins or corrupted members of parliament.

The eBay stunt happened a week after students occupied the main building of the University of Sofia demanding the resignation of the Socialist-dominated government and an end to perceived corruption in politics. The open-ended sit-ins have since engulfed colleges across the Balkan country, from the Burgas University on the Black Sea coast to the university in Ruse on the border of the Danube river with Romania.

The wave of student protest began in Sofia on October 23rd with the occupation of a hall where the chairman of the constitutional court, Dimitar Tokushev, was giving a lecture. The court is seen as too close to the government. Its decision in early October to allow Delyan Peevski, a controversial media mogul, to keep his seat in...Continue reading