The Sunday protest of police officers ended with the appointing of a new one for Thursday. The head collision with the government was avoided after Interior Minister Rumyana Bachvarova voiced to the public the withdrawal of all her proposals for reforms in the security sector. However, the protesters scored no victory, and the tension remained.

The cabinet withdrew its reform proposals, but still determined the one-week-long police strike as illegal. The law says that a protest must be announced first and the respective permit should be obtained – it doesn’t look good when the police itself violate the rules. Their trade unions claim however that it is not the resignation of the minister that they require, since the problem is not in her personality, but in the model of governing. This assessment adds a political nuance to the social demands of the police force that is not allowed to tackle politics. On the other hand, Sunday saw resignation demands in front of the parliament, which meant nothing else but a serious discrepancy inside the protest.

There were voices saying that military personnel would join the protests as well. No soldiers or officers were spotted in front of parliament on Sunday and the defense minister thanked them for not succumbing to provocations. The reactions of the army and the police show a significant difference and now nobody talks about protests within the Security sector, but it is a police one only.

Negotiations shall be now going on between the trade unions and the government till Thursday, when the first reading of the draft state budget will take place. The text envisages the cutting of the force’s social package. The protesters might face a proposal on the keeping of the social packages but under the condition that if a certain officer is not good at his work, he might lose those partially, for instance. The idea came from former PM Ivan Kostov, who reminded of such practice in the USA. A significant part of the society would surely support the idea, as the latter doesn’t seem to show any solidarity with the police protests. The government will for sure take advantage of this situation.

English version: Zhivko Stanchev