I highly recommend listening to the speech of Jordanian King Abdullah II, and then Zelensky.
Not because of the English of one or the way the other speaks, but to feel the difference between a leader who speaks to the world and a politician who reports on his activities.
Abdullah II gave a real master class.
Leave even his English aside. He speaks without reading and is clearly not speaking only to the people in the hall. He is speaking to the millions who will hear this speech tomorrow from their TV, computer or phone. His message is directed to them.
There is a rhythm. Pause. Emphasis. Measured emotion. Sentences that are written in such a way as to remain in the mind.
There is a message.
Zelensky is a different type of speaker, but the effect is similar.
His speeches to the UN have long been an example of how a head of state can turn a specific national tragedy into a conversation about principles, international order and responsibility. Back in 2022, he spoke not just about Ukraine, but about what aggression means for every country in the UN system.
This is exactly the great art of political speech - to turn your national position into a message that others recognize as important to them too.
And now listen to the speech of Iliana Yotova. In content - a typical speech of a bureaucrat - written by a bureaucrat, delivered by a bureaucrat.
Thesis, a supporting point, another thesis, another supporting point. To say the right things, in the right institutional order. To take into account the position. To include all the obligatory topics.
But where is the attempt to reach the consciousness of the hall?
Where is the sentence that people will remember?
Where is the moment when the head of state does not just represent Bulgaria, but makes others listen to Bulgaria?
Because a president's speech is not a protocol. It is a political instrument.
And when you are on the podium of the UN General Assembly, you are not just speaking to the delegates in the hall. You are speaking to the world.
The history of this podium is full of leaders who understood this - from Mandela and Obama to today's Zelensky and Abdullah II. Different countries, different causes, different styles. But one thing in common - they know how to turn a speech into an event. The UN Archives show precisely this tradition.
With Yotova, the feeling is different. It's as if the task is not to impress the world, but to acknowledge that we were present. Not to leave a trace, but to put a mark.
And here comes the big difference.
Leadership is not just what you say. It's how you say it. Pause.
Tone. Emphasis. Emotion. Look. A sense of personal attitude towards words.
A feeling that the person in front of you is not reading someone else's text, but is speaking his own convictions.
And this is not compensated for by a protocolically correct text.
Nor by another point of support from the foreign policy folder.
You can have a perfectly arranged speech and it passes through the hall like a straight line - without a peak, without a dip, without a moment that makes you raise your head.
Nothing. Zero, Equal as sea level.
And that's the pity. Because Bulgaria has something to say.
The question is whether the person on the podium can say it in such a way that the world wants to hear it. I don't know about you.
But that's very, very far from my idea of a leader.
And even further from my idea of a head of state. Light years.
Boring nomenclature.