From the Viola to Politics

   Let's meet the "singing politician" 

    Stanislav Todorov Trifonov, more famously known as just Slavi, is a Bulgarian musician, singer and late-night show host, born in 1966 in Pleven. 

    Trifonov graduated the SMU school of music in Pleven, with specialization in viola and later the National Academy of Music in Sofia. He is one of the founding members of music groups such as "Exiles", "Canalleto", "Hâšovete" and "KU-KU Bend". 

    Trifonov often used his position of fame in the public, to criticize Bulgaria's political elite, something that eventually cost him his show.

   Political initiative

     Even back in the 90s, Trifonov was politically active. He officially supported and participated in the anti-Videnov protests of 1997. Thought he is more famous for his reformist ideas back from 2016. 

     In late 2015, Trifonov became chairman of a committee, that planned to change the electoral system of Bulgaria, through a referendum. The referendum was held in 2016 and the 3 asked questions were:

1: Do you support, the National Assembly members to be elected via a majoritarian system (FPTP) in 2 rounds?

2: Do you support mandatory participation of voters in elections and referendums?

3: Do you support, the party subsidies lend by the government to the political organizations to be 1 lev for 1 vote, determined from the last parliamentary elections?

    Question 1 recieved 71% yes and 29% no

    Question 2 recieved 62% yes and 38% no

    Question 3 recieved 71% yea and 29% no

    All and all, the referendum was dubbed as successful by Trifonov and his surrounding group, but because the participation of the voters was 50,8%, which ment that the threshold of 51% was not reached. The referendum eventually was determined as non-binding by the government, and the said changes were not put in power. This pushed Trifonov to take an even  more negative stance toward the 2nd Borisov government and Bulgaria's political elite as a whole.

    Start of Trifonov's political career.

    Due to the high amounts of criticism and political biases that were present in "The Show of Slavi Trifonov", that aired on BTV from 2000, the show was chanceled in July 2019. 

    This move was described as needed by BTV, because the show was seen as offensive and biases towards particular people. Trifonov on his part, described this move as "political censoring" .

    This though didn't stop Trifonov and in August 2019 he announced that he will continue to host his show and participate in Bulgarian civil issues. In September he founded his own media called "7/8 TV" where he once again hosted his late night show. 

     In late 2019, saying that change is needed in Bulgaria and he wont allow the status quo to continue abusing its power, he announced a future political project. 

     He founded his first political project named "There is no such state" and planned to officially register it as a political party. But because the name was seen as offensive towards the state itself, the electoral commission refuse to ratify the party. After some negotiations, the name was chnage to ITN (There is such people) and in February 2020 Trifonov finaly got his political party.

    Now a little bit about ITN

    ITN is a broad coalition between mostly reformist political lobbies and close friends to Trifonov himself. The ideas of the party are focused towards the absolute removal of corruption in Bulgaria, introducing direct-democracy and anti-elitism. Of course we cant argue, that the movement itself is mainly inspired by Trifonov himself, thus giving it it's populist characteristic.

    It's hard to economically determine the position of ITN across the spectrum, but because of the diversity of the coalition and mainly because of the silence of Trifonov on economics, we can call it a broadly centrist party. 

    ITN has stood fairly silent during the still ongoing national protests against the GERB government, which did eventually droped ITN down in the polls, still retaining 3rd position though.

   A recent scandal that took part in ITN was the expulsion of the regional chairman of ITN for Vidin Oblast. This happened for the simple fact that she was seen talking with Borisov, which forced Trifonov to quickly fire her, as his rhetoric towards the political status quo is highly agresive.