The New Bulgarian PM Georgi Bliznashki: What Should Be Remembered

A brief sketch on Georgi Bliznashki, the caretaker Prime Minister to assume office on Wednesday, and his recent activities.

Bliznashki: from High-Ranking Socialist Party Member to Civil Rights Activist

With several landmark books on parliamentary rule, the 57-year-old Georgi Bliznashki is the second professor to become PM in Bulgaria's most recent history.

Once a key Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) member presiding over the socialists' organization in the capital Sofia, he was also the party's likely presidential candidate to be pitted against Rosen Plevneliev in 2011, but lost the internal battle to former MEP Ivaylo Kalfin.

Just two years later his stance was quite the opposite, as he defied the BSP-led government's decision to appoint controversial liberal MEP Delyan Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security (DANS) which prompted thousands of Bulgarians to flock to the streets in protest.

The professor later managed to coin for himself an image of a civil rights activist representing the academic circles by supporting actions of the so-called "Early-Rising Students", a group of young people who spearheaded a number of rallies and actions calling for a government resignation.

In January, he was the most outspoken supporter of the President's proposal that a national poll be held on the introduction of a majority system, mandatory voting and electronic voting and even became Chairman of the Initiative Committee raising these demands (though formally distancing himself from Plevneliev) and gathering citizen signatures to table them in Parliament.

His actions did not go unnoticed by the BSP, however; socialists summarily expelled him on March 7 this year for what they...