Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has accused President Georgi Parvanov of outright lying about pressure on the media in the wake of an article of “The Economist” which said Bulgaria might be becoming a police state.

“I have had my political cabinet sent out letters to the editors-in-chief of all major media, to the media organizations which represent them in order for them to reveal which media have been pressured in the recent months. Parvanov – and I am not calling him the President because his behavior is unworthy of that title – Parvanov is directly lying about this,” Prime Minister Boyko Borisov commented on Sunday after attending the ceremony for the dedication of the Assumption Church in the Sitnyakovo Quarter in Sofia.

His statement comes a day after President Parvanov, speaking after a similar church opening ceremony, criticized the Borisov Cabinet for turning Bulgaria into a police state. Commenting on The Economist article entitled “Guarding the Guardians,” Parvanov claimed that the country has been gripped by fear from repressions.

Borisov’s immediate response late Saturday night was that he cared only about the opinion of people who mattered such as the CIA Director Leon Panetta, who praised the efforts of the Cabinet during his visit to Sofia on Wednesday and Thursday.

Borisov’s statement on Sunday was spurred by the other suggestion made by the President – namely, that by reducing the number of the members of the Council for Electronic Media (CEM) from nine to five the government is trying to impose tight control on the media, and to scare journalists into submission. Largely on these grounds, Parvanov imposed a suspensive veto on the Radio and Television Act.

“I fail to fathom how in a time of financial and economic crisis all over the world a head of state would want to try to topple a democratically elected government, and to spur a political crisis. I understand that the assessments that the government receives don’t coincide with his view but I don’t understand why he should be so sympathetic towards organized crime,” Prime Minister Borisov commented on Sunday.

He declared that - contrary to the president’s advice that the government should do what the other Bulgarian government had been in the last 15 years – his government was going to do exactly the opposite of the actions of all previous Cabinets.

“With or without any pretext, Parvanov is attacking our government every single day. Yesterday, like a volley fired by the Cruiser “Aurora”, his buddies Sergey Stanishev and Ahmed Dogan attacked the government simultaneously. We must tell the people clearly that with Dogan and the DPS we will never do what Parvanov did. I wish him to do all sorts of projects – whatever he wants – together with Stanishev and the DPS. Our nation has Euro-Atlantic orientation which will persist forever,” Borisov stated apparently referring to the fact that in 2005 President Georgi Parvanov brokered the creation of the three-way coalition government between Stanishev’s Socialist Party, Ahmed Dogan’s ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) and the NMSP of ex Tsar and PM Simeon Saxe-Coburg.

Borisov did point out that mistakes are possible during police operations, and that he had been assured by Interior Minister Tsvetanov that the ministry is doing its best to avoid any mishaps.

When asked about the idea of his informal ally Volen Siderov, leader of the nationalist party Ataka, that the state should intervene with respect to bank interest rates, Borisov said it might be dangerous to regulate these matters because of the risk of overstepping the state’s authority.

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