“At the moment all reforms in education are a question of courage. That is how I see it. This is my way of assuming responsibility as deputy prime minister. There are many things one can lose, but if one loses courage, one has lost everything. At this time reforms in the sphere of education are a question of courage,” Meglena Kuneva told reporters in parliament minutes after being voted minister of education and science.

She took over the post vacated by Prof. Todor Tanev who was forced to tender in his resignation after a vociferous controversy over the new syllabus and textbooks that gave rise to interpretations such as “trampling of the Bulgarian spirit” and “disintegration of the national identity”. So, Prof. Tanev joined the army of former ministers of education whose undoing was the “trampling of the Bulgarian spirit”. Parliament has no memory of as heated a debate on a cabinet minister’s nomination, as the debate on the nomination of Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva from the quota of the Reformist Bloc (part of the ruling coalition) but… all’s well that ends well. Meglena Kuneva was voted education minister with 104 votes in favour. She got the votes of some of the Reformists, the Bulgarian Democratic Centre, the Patriots and the independents. In the face of scathing criticism from Kuneva’s opponents, the results were: 66 against, 31 abstained with 15 MPs from the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and Ataka absent from the plenary session. So, the same old trick of bringing down the quorum seems to have worked one more time – the Deputy Prime Minister was given the ministerial position, preventing the latest in a string of fracases for the Borrisov-2 cabinet.

“I give you one of the best intellectual jewels there could be in Bulgaria at this moment – Mrs. Kuneva,” said Prof. Tanev when he presented the new education minister. Remaining within the realm of the professor’s vocabulary, we should perhaps go back to one of Madeleine Albright’s brooches – pieces of jewellery she famously used as symbols – the “shattered glass” brooch, a symbol that she had succeeded in shattering the “glass ceiling” of a male-dominated world to become the first woman state secretary of USA. Meglena Kuneva shattered the “glass ceiling” of tradition at the Ministry of Education and Science to become the first minister without a teaching background. To answer those who would say she is not sufficiently qualified, we could well say that there probably is a Bulgarian Einstein somewhere who could well head the ministry but that politics is a different kettle of fish altogether. Meglena Kuneva is a high-profile name in Bulgarian politics, she is a lawyer by training with an academic degree. We remember her as Minister of European Affairs in the cabinets of Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Sergey Stanishev, as the first European commissioner from Bulgaria in the Barroso commission, where she was in charge of consumer protection, as presidential candidate. Her party, the Bulgaria for Citizens Movement is a member of the Reformist Bloc, and following the latest general election became part of the ruling coalition. As deputy prime minister in Boyko Borissov’s cabinet, her priorities are to draft a strategy for countering corruption and to prepare the country for the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU in 2018.

One of the “glass ceilings” Kuneva has yet to shatter is the proper implementation of the funding under the OP Science and Education, a sum amounting to 1.37 billion Leva that has to be distributed over the period until 2020, alongside the national co-financing. Knowing what the deputy prime minister is in charge of it would be inappropriate to think of any possible corruption practices. In her capacity of minister, Meglena Kuneva will have many “glass ceilings” to shatter: to woo rather than punish her rivals from the Reformist Bloc, to prove that she has not taken over the ministerial post out of lust for more power but in order to “give education a powerful thrust forward”, to bring the idea of “education as a national objective for Bulgaria” to fruition so that it may mould the young generation to be free people capable of independent thought, so education itself may be equally accessible to poor and rich alike.

Finally, a suggestion – instead of bickering over “the trampled Bulgarian spirit”, the Deputy Prime Minister and now Minister of Education Meglena Kuneva could propose the Cyrillic alphabet and the mission of the brothers Cyril and Methodius as the symbol of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the EU. It should not be forgotten that it is thanks to us, Bulgarians that this alphabet gained European status.

English version: Milena Daynova