The economist is a former member of Parliament for the leftist Bulgarian Socialist Party.
Despite his dossier as a loyal Communist, Paramov gained fame for openly criticizing the former ruling coalition led by socialist prime minister, Sergey Stanishev. Paramov called Stanishev the “weakest PM in Bulgarian history” and “hesitant, incapable, and pressured by the ethnic Turkish party leader, Ahmed Dogan, who is ruling the country through 4-5 oligarchs.”
Paramov also made a name for himself by criticizing of the currency board, implemented in 1997, and the decision to peg the national currency lev to the euro. He called the board “shallow” and claimed that the “real parity of the lev towards the euro is 3.89, and not 1.96,” as it is now.
Some political observers now fear the PM’s newest economic adviser might want to change the requirements of the board, which is seen as an inflexible, yet necessary instrument for keeping the national financial system stable.
Bulgaria Still Plagued by Former Secret Police Agents
Twenty years after the fall of communism, Bulgarian society is still tainted by the presence and rule of former agents of state security structures, also known as the secret police.
The secret services exercised total control over Bulgaria’s people. They were known for totally disregarding human rights and profiling Bulgarian citizens based on their social status and beliefs. Secret services reports were used to put pressure on those who were deemed “uncomfortable” to the Communist regime. The Bulgarian Secret Service had very close relations with the infamous Soviet secret police, the KGB.
The current president of Bulgaria, Georgi Parvanov, also collaborated with secret service under the alias “Goce.”
Two of the current ministers in Bulgarian government – Bozhidar Dimitrov, minister without portfolio, and the Deputy Minister of Interior Pavlin Dimitrov were also involved in the activities of secret police.
Krasimir Kostov, deputy minister of foreign affairs, gave up his post last November because of his former affiliations with state security.
Before the latest National Assembly elections in July 2009, the Files Committee announced that 142 candidates for the assembly have been secret agents in the not too distant past. The biggest number of ex-agents were from the former ruling parties, the Bulgarian Socialist Party (13 former collaborators) and the ethnic Turkish, Movement for Rights and Freedoms, including its leader Ahmed Dogan.
The current ruling centrist party Citizens for European Development for Bulgaria, known by its Bulgarian acronym GERB, presented several ex-agents but PM Boyko Borisov stated they were not agents, but orderly employees, and ratified them.
Borisov, a holder of a black belt in karate, was himself the personal bodyguard of former communist leader Todor Zhivkov, but later denounced communist rule and declared himself anti-communist.
Among the parliamentary parties, only rightist Blue Coalition and The Greens Party did not have ex-agents among their listings.
Bulgarian candidate for European Commissioner and Vice President of the World Bank Kristalina Georgieva, was checked by the Files Committee for her past, and found that her dossier is clean.
