To be optimistic about Bulgaria is to be a fool or a demagogue. This is a dying country. The other day they found the hot water, that we were already 6 million, everything has moved out, there are no prospects here, especially against the background of geopolitical shifts.
This is what Prof. Ivo Hristov, sociologist and geopolitical analyst, said in an interview with BNR.
And despite his pessimism, he added:
"There is always hope, but as I have always said, if there is hope for Bulgaria, it is not thanks to it, but in spite of the Bulgarians, understand it metaphorically!"
On the upcoming elections and the expected low voter turnout, he thinks:
"We rank as a quantity, that is, we are not a subject that determines its foreign policy position. What politicians do is adapt to the external sovereign. A lot can change and it won't. Politicians are not disturbed by this fact – how many people will vote."
When asked if we refuse to vote, aren't we heading for an authoritarian regime, he quickly answered: Is it different now?
According to him, it is naive to think that each of us can influence:
"We are like the fly that lands on the horse's forehead and is convinced that it is pulling the cart."
Prof. Ivo Hristov categorically refused to comment on the aggressive election campaign, because "there is nothing to comment on, and every attempt is an abomination to the senses".
And is convinced that:
"Bulgaria has no politics, the battle for power, resources and the presentation of an emanation of democracy is, to put it mildly, ridiculous. We are watching the convulsions of a finished society."
His prediction of what will happen after the election is that it will be "whatever the outside bosses order, that will happen.
"And at the European level, completely new things will happen, which will set completely new parameters for the continent. Because at the moment the status quo, which is presented as the only possible one for the European idea, European values, for the EU, for European integration and other such alabalisms, may for the first time be threatened by national, conservative and sovereign desires in parts of Europe. In them, peoples try to model their own lives and futures. Bulgaria is not among them", predicts the analyst.
And he explained that the European theme is infinitely far from the Bulgarians:
"So beyond Eurocomsomol activists, the average Bulgarian does not see the connection. Bulgaria is a peripheral territory of this same European project – no people will return to Bulgaria, no re-industrialization will take place and no changes will take place in the current sorry state of the country, while it is in the capacity of a quantity and a third-rate peripheral element in the European Empire".