„A person is as big as his dreams are big. And sociologists have never given us big percentages. Despite everything, we are already a factor in politics and this cannot be disputed even by our biggest opponents. This gives me reason to count on a very good performance on our part“.
This was commented on „This Morning“ by Prof. Juliana Mateeva, professor of criminal law, lawyer and former MP, after sociologists predicted about 2% in the elections for "Velichye". She is the candidate for vice president of the formation. And it will be up to Ivelin Mihaylov on the day of the presidential election.
„And the run-off should not be pre-judged, as it turned out yesterday, by some messages that, in my opinion, are infinitely unacceptable. It is literally putting the cart before the horse, if you will allow me the unacademic expression“, she pointed out.
„The role of the vice president cannot be considered separately from that of the president. And it seems to me that what Bulgarian citizens lack is greater accessibility of the presidential institution. With this, of course, we do not want to take away the halo of the head of state. He can be closer to the people. We see that President Yotova's efforts at the moment, during the election campaign, are aimed at establishing contact with the people. This should not be only within the framework of the election campaign. This is what the president should be like, Mateeva pointed out.
„The fact that the powers should be restored in the form they were in before the changes to the Constitution of 2023, we not only say it, but also stated it from the rostrum of the National Assembly and formulated it in a project. We do not want some extraordinary expansion of powers. We do not want to move to a presidential republic“, the vice-presidential candidate noted.
„We are aware of the powers of the president and we want them to be restored in the form in which the constitutional legislator envisaged them before the changes in question. These changes, the more time passes, I begin to think that they were actually a way to build up public pressure in support of the presidential institution, which led to such surprising results in the April elections. People tend to sympathize when a figure who generally enjoys public trust is further oppressed,“ noted Mateeva.
“They take powers, take official administration cars, take the opportunity to appoint the chairman of the National Agency for National Security and so on. In general, the direction in which they were going was to increase public tension, so that somehow this figure would become more and more desirable as a leader and chief of the nation,“ she said.
“I increasingly think that it was not a coincidence. Because people who are so different in the political spectrum cannot suddenly be united by such an idea and consolidate it with constitutional changes that all lawyers categorically rejected as insane“, added the candidate of “Majesty“.
“The eurozone was something that was forced on the Bulgarian people. We actively opposed the process of joining the eurozone. We protested, we went to Brussels to express our disagreement with Bulgaria being joined by force and contrary to any economic indicators. I am not an expert, but I trust the experts who said that we are not ready“, commented Prof. Juliana Mateeva.
“And the results currently on the market and in general in the overall situation, in people's lives, clearly prove that we were right. And despite everything, we are there. This is a fact. But we definitely believe that we should maintain some neutrality at the moment. And I don't see how this contradicts our membership in unions. We see that a large country like the United States decides to look after its own interests, which are related to oil prices, and not to take into account membership in unions that it actually dominates,“ she added.
In her words, we must be understood in our inability to provide more assistance than we are able to.
“I think that before the elections, a position was stated that showed the government's flexibility in both directions. After the elections, this line seemed to be more of an attempt to please both sides,“ Mateeva said.
“I think that before the elections, when “Progressive Bulgaria“ was still gaining followers, it was playing with the pro-Russian part of the voters. Something that, however, after the elections, did not seem to be followed as a line of conduct,“ she also pointed out.
„I think that there are currently aggressors in many places around the world. And everywhere where military actions are being conducted, there is an aggressor on some side. In this case, the aggressor is Russia, but this conflict has a history and we cannot answer unequivocally the question of who committed it, who fired the first weapon“, Mateeva commented.
„I think that when a person sows wind, he reaps storms. And in a situation in which we supply one of the two countries with weapons, when we are the main supplier of weapons and in every way show support for one of the two countries, this inevitably makes us an enemy state for the other. This situation in which we found ourselves, I think, is not without a history“, Mateeva stated.
„The latest situation with these unidentified drones is that it is almost a foregone conclusion who these drones belong to. We have no information about the origin of the drones, but this question was raised anyway and resolved with an invitation to the Russian ambassador for a conversation. This predetermined the answer to the question of what the drones are,“ said Mateeva.
According to her, we should take an example from the big countries.