Across the Vardar, they are trying to downplay Iliana Iotova’s victory and cast doubt on her legitimacy to “tell North Macedonia what to do”
I will begin quite directly: the election of Iliana Iotova as president of Bulgaria and Kiril Valchev as vice president of our country produced several pieces of news for the political elite and the media in North Macedonia. One was good and several others less so.
This was commented on by Kostadin Filipov for "Trud".
They created the good news themselves. They very much wanted the topic of Bulgaria’s relations with North Macedonia to be one of the most important issues in the election campaign. This is an old sore point for the political elite and the media across the Vardar, who suffer when the problems in our relations with North Macedonia do not feature in Bulgaria’s political and public debate—and prominently at that. On the other side of the border, there is a deeply rooted notion that Bulgarians should supposedly go to bed and get up thinking about what is or is not happening with our southwestern neighbors. I will not dwell on the origins of this understanding, but the very fact that the inclusion of a question in Friday’s election debate about what the future Bulgarian president intended to do regarding North Macedonia sparked lively controversy says a lot. “There you have it,” they say, “they cannot do without us; there is no way. Once both of them took it upon themselves to defend their positions in the most important event of the election campaign—the bilateral debate on BNT—it means that we matter to them...”
The positions of the two presidential candidates, Iotova and Gyurov, were described in detail and carefully analyzed. No particular difference was found; it was merely noted that, if there was one, it lay in each candidate’s desire to show who had made the greater contribution to achieving the so-called “French proposal” of July 2022. Still, emphasis was placed on Iliana Iotova’s words that she would not yield a single centimeter from Bulgaria’s position regarding the demand for amendments to North Macedonia’s Constitution and the inclusion of Bulgarians in it. As for Gyurov, it was pointed out that he saw the greatest merit of the parties supporting him in Europeanizing the dispute with Skopje and building the EU consensus on its resolution. In any case, the inclusion of the topic of relations with North Macedonia in the televised debate between Iotova and Gyurov was seen as a sign that Bulgaria’s political class, as well as society as a whole, is deeply interested in how our bilateral relations might develop in the future. Yet on the night after the vote, when the decisive victory of the Iotova–Valchev ticket became clear, I kept switching channels to follow the discussions, and I did not hear any of the numerous guests in the studios even broach this topic—or at least mark it as one of the main factors behind the winners’ success. We have other concerns and other problems that preoccupy us, other worries far removed from the expectation in Skopje that how we behave toward them will win us elections.
The most active in analyzing the conduct of Iotova and Gyurov was Toni Popovski, the husband of North Macedonia’s recently departed ambassador to Bulgaria, Mrs. Rusi. He himself served as ecology minister in Ljubco Georgievski’s first government in 1998, representing Democratic Alternative, then a coalition partner of VMRO-DPMNE. Clearly, his time in Bulgaria as the second member of Mrs. Agnesa Rusi’s family gave him the confidence—and the opportunity—to closely follow the Bulgarian political scene and the conduct of its leading figures. There is nothing wrong with that, if I may put it that way: another expert on Bulgarian affairs who clearly has an interest in dealing with them seriously, including on social media. This, in turn, took me back to the first years of my professional work in Skopje, when, during the 1994 World Cup in the United States, the best commentator of the Bulgarian team’s matches on local television was Gjoko Hadzievski. Gjoko had spent several years at the helm of CSKA Sofia, and it was quite logical that he, with his extensive knowledge, should assess the play and the players of our team, which brought us such great joy at the time—fourth place in the world. Hadzievski has remained a friend of Bulgaria to this day, whereas I am not so sure about Popovski.
Of course, after the first round there were also tendentious and provocative assessments, typical of most analysts and commentators across the Vardar. I came across a television debate in which the participants focused mainly on the low voter turnout. This fact, which also worried the campaign teams of the presidential candidates in Bulgaria, was viewed above all as a blow to the legitimacy of the election of Bulgaria’s new head of state. In the typically pub-like style that often prevails in such debates on television screens across the border, one of the participants emphatically vowed that he would not allow a president with such a low degree of legitimacy to lecture him on how to treat the Bulgarians in the country.
There should be no doubt that this will be the new talking point for politicians in Skopje from now on. After Sunday’s second round, there was no shortage of comments on voter turnout and the number of votes received by the election winners, questioning the legitimacy of the new president. “This difference does not diminish the legal importance of the election, but it calls into question the political weight of the mandate received. The president is the constitutional head of state of all Bulgarian citizens, not only of those who took part in the second round. When the majority remains outside the ballot box, the demand for a unifying role collides with limited public legitimacy,” one of Skopje’s print publications wrote in a commentary on the election results. Incidentally, some Bulgarian analysts also emphasized this point. One of the sociologists appearing as a guest on BNT, for example, sometime around midnight and just before the end of the program, delivered through clenched teeth, as her final remark, that the problem with Iotova and Valchev’s five-year mandate would precisely be the low legitimacy conferred on them by the election result. A new talking point, as I’m telling you.
So much for the good news from Sofia, if it was good news at all. But that is how they chose to see it across Skopje, so let us not spoil their dubious pleasure. The bad news for them is that Bulgaria’s new president is Iliana Iotova. I say this with a great deal of irony, because if anything good for our relations with North Macedonia did happen in this presidential election, it is precisely the fact that Iotova won the vote. Why? There is a rule in politics that it is easier to work with someone whose firm positions you know well than with someone you are only just getting to know. In this sense, “our little Macedonians,” as the media in Skopje described the two candidates born in the city of Gotse Delchev, Gyurov and Kandev, represented a major unknown. Perhaps the more careful and thorough analyses arrived at the assumption that, since both had the support of PP, they were probably of the same “blood group” as Kiril Petkov, whom certain circles in Skopje remember as a prime minister and as someone who could be “pierced.” It was no coincidence that the media gave space to the report that Petkov had threatened to sue Iotova because, during the debate with Gyurov on BNT, she had accused him of treason. He had come close to doing so because of his lack of preparation on the subject and because he allowed himself to be led by his adviser on international affairs.
Gyurov and Kandev really were unknown quantities, whereas Iotova is entirely clear. Her image as a politician and vice president who consistently defended the rights of Bulgarians in North Macedonia was supplemented by her work in the period following Rumеn Radev’s departure and his plunge into inter-party battles. I am certain that Prime Minister Hristijan Mickoski, Foreign Minister Timcho Mucunski, and above all Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova have an idea of the kind of person and stateswoman they will have to work with and take into account from now on. It will not be easy for them, let them know that! Above all because Iotova understands the origins of the problem in our relations with North Macedonia, has personal impressions of the people there, has visited our neighboring country many times, and knows from experience the sentiments of the Bulgarians whose rights she champions and works to defend. She does not need to study the matter or have someone give her advice; she did her homework long ago on how and why it makes sense to develop our relations with Skopje and how this could benefit the Balkans as a whole. On top of that, she will have the support of Kiril Valchev, who, if you ask me, should be constantly patted on the back for opening BTA’s permanent press club in central Skopje and sending an agency correspondent there. I have been a direct witness to the efforts he made so that Bulgarian society could receive more information about everything happening with our neighbors. The press club on Nikola Vaptsarov Street, located right “under Bucephalus’s tail”—the horse from the monument to Alexander the Great in Skopje’s square—has also become a venue for lively discussions seeking ways to increase bilateral trust.
Still, as a sufficiently mature man who spent many years as a journalist across the Vardar, I will allow myself to offer one piece of advice to both of you: Mrs. Iotova, Mr. Valchev, you have a five-year term ahead of you. During it, you will have many opportunities to express your support for Bulgarians in North Macedonia. There will surely be moments when you will have to take a position on specific cases involving violations of the rights of someone with Bulgarian identity and citizenship. I ask only one thing of you: before staking the authority of the institution you represent, familiarize yourselves thoroughly with all the circumstances surrounding the case in question. I continue to maintain that in thirty-five years of the sovereign and independent Republic of North Macedonia, we have still not learned how to work with the Bulgarians there in such a way that every attempt to defend their rights is not accompanied by a scandal.
I think this must come to an end. And you could be the ones to make a start.