The MIR Party left the "BSP-United Left" Coalition, stating that the coalition agreement and dialogue were violated, and people who were directly dependent on Delyan Peevski were placed at the head of the lists. What happened… Simeon Slavchev, chairman of PP MIR, spoke to FAKTI.
- Mr. Slavchev, the MIR party left the left unification, but did you leave it peacefully…
- I think we left him peacefully, but the questions are why… The main reason we left the merger was that the coalition agreement was broken because we wanted the list leaders to have high moral qualities…
- Let's go back a bit then and start like this. What was the initial conversation about the coalition agreement and what happened afterwards?
- We had clearly outlined in the coalition agreement how the list leaders would be determined, and this was precisely violated, because the lists and leaders were agreed behind the scenes. A coalition council was not convened, in which, in fact, all parties are represented. From PP MIR, we explicitly insisted that such a coalition council be convened, because the leaders of the lists are not only the BSP or the respective party that presented them. When we are in a coalition, the people on the lists represent the entire coalition. Thus, each of us who has signed is responsible for these lists and for these people. This coalition council did not take place, the dialogue was totally disrupted. Personally, as the chairman of the MIR party, which participated in this coalition, and we subsequently left it, I received the lists with the list leaders literally one hour before the meeting of the BSP Executive Bureau, which was supposed to approve them. And notice. They called me for an interview to offer me driving positions in Silistra, Pernik and several other areas. It is extremely frivolous. I would even call this approach childish, because it is not a serious approach. It is clear. It is not serious for a political formation like the BSP and for people who have claims in politics.
- What they gave you as lists, who made it?
- And I also ask the question: “Who?“ But I ask it in the context of the “Koi“ model, which in Bulgaria is known as the “Borisov-Peevski“ model. Because inside these lists, which were provided to me by the BSP, there are people who are closely related to this model “Who”. Your colleagues have repeatedly called on me to provide evidence, but part of the evidence has been publicly collected. For example, let's see how a large part of the BSP people's representatives in these lists voted for the scandalous Anton Slavchev, who is closely related to Delyan Peevski. The vote went so that he remained the head of the Anti-Corruption Commission. And this happened literally a few days before the election campaign began. Not to mention that this is an absolutely unprincipled position. Here is the proof - people from the BSP voted “for“, but there was no “against“ and “abstained”. So Anton Slavchev stayed at this post, and what is that but dependence.
I would be interested to hear from the BSP why there were no votes “against“ nor “abstained“, but only those “for“.
Other claims in the public space are directly related to Kiril Dobrev, who has repeatedly been discussed as winning public contracts in municipalities that are managed by GERB. This puts him in a direct conflict of interest in politics. In this sense, in the MIR party, we have always defended principled positions and said that this cannot be done. We entered with great desire and ambitions into this union of the left, because it had to be a union on a principled, moral basis. And what happened – the left union was given a concession to the model “Who“ through the leaves. We simply did not have the moral right to remain in this coalition. Moreover, the MIR party has been fighting against the “Who“ model for years. and these dependencies dictated by the backstage in Bulgarian politics.
- Did you have contacts and do you have contacts with the other partners in the association. What happens after you retire. What processes are going on?
- All coalition partners share the opinion of the MIR party that the coalition agreement is violated, that the leaders of the lists and the lists themselves are determined in a non-transparent manner. A large part of them supported our thesis that there are closely related people in the lists with Delyan Peevski. It's just that we left because we don't want to bear the responsibility associated with these individuals. The other parties wanted to stay but distanced themselves and said that the BSP was responsible for the leaders. I do not share this opinion, because the responsibility is borne by all representatives in the coalition. After all, each one of us has put our signature, name and party, signing the lists and leaders when talking about a coalition.
- Will these elections be more interesting and different. We see two DPS, a union on the left…
- A real unification of the left, unfortunately, we are unlikely to see, because for these reasons that I said, the dialogue was broken both at the national level and at the regional level. The fact is that people from different organizations are leaving at the moment. A few days ago there was a press conference of people from Pleven who confirmed that the dialogue with the regional structures – including the coalition partners, is violated, and this also leads to some kind of tension. The colleagues from Pleven clearly said that they are not represented in the lists in the Pleven region and will not actively participate in the elections. As far as the national elections are concerned, they will not be different from what we have now. On the contrary, I rather expect the campaign to pass under a negative image - to be pathetic and greasy, if I can use that slang expression.
Nothing different than what we currently have in the political space, I don't think we will have after the vote.
But I also expect that after these elections at the end of October, the process of unification of Bulgarian citizens will begin, and we will no longer call this process only the unification of the left, but it will be a unification based on principles and values. That is yet to come – unification based on Bulgarian traditional values. We, as left-wing people, oppose what is happening in Europe, the so-called Euro-Atlantic values. I believe that united around the traditional Bulgarian values, I am even convinced that not in this, but in the next elections, Bulgarian voters will have a real alternative, because our country is in free fall at the moment. To stop this fall, it is up to each and every one of us. Our homeland is sinking - wake up people, unite, vote.