Ivan Sotirov from the "Blue Bulgaria" coalition, municipal councilor, former member of parliament and former vice-president of the Union of the democratic forces, in an interview with the Audiocast of "Focus“ "This is Bulgaria”.
There was a need for "Blue Sofia” to grow into a movement – you did it. What do you rely on in the political battle for the voters' vote?
We count on all the people who want political normalcy to return to both the parliament and the institutions to talk about politics and do politics. Because I have been repeating for many years that the parties in Bulgaria have degraded and turned into oligarchic corporate structures, there is no political logic in them, there is no value debate with a clash of ideas. Look including at this disintegrated "assemblage", which will surely come back together again, because what is happening is Leninist: to separate in order to unite – they are taken apart to be put back together. And they will imitate a pre-election war, they will want, with all the pre-election drama, to engage the public attention in this epic clash, so that they can somehow get back together afterwards.
But we saw that with everything they flaunted, how they did it in the name of Euro-Atlanticism, on the contrary, they did everything possible to discredit Euro-Atlanticism and instill Euroscepticism. They are more dangerous than the actions of BSP and "Vazrazhdane", because the very fact of turning Peevski into a banner of Euro-Atlanticism is something that Putin could not dream of in Bulgaria. If he had paid them, they would not have come up with a more efficient way to discredit themselves.
No one knows about the payment.
Well no, we see that the Bulgarian oligarchs are behind everything. There is no oligarch in Bulgaria who is not with the BKP or DS genesis and who is not configured in a Russian direction. Our entire oligarchic model is a copy-paste of the Russian oligarchic model and they are connected because this corruption model that is implemented in Bulgaria, it imitates the Soviet one, but it is a smaller one of course, it is not these scales, this brutality that is in Russia. But anyway, they cannot realize this way of doing business in a European or a Western context. Not that there is no corruption there, but this brutality, this lack of decency cannot be seen. Because there is also corruption in the West, but there people still have some sense of decency.
There is one other important difference: in the West there are corrupt politicians and in the West there are politicians who lie, but the moment you are publicly exposed for having lied or implemented some corrupt practices, it is over for you politics. While here in Bulgaria, the same people 10 times catch them in gross lies, tricks, tricks, assemblies, running over all the red lines that they drew before the elections, and for these people there is no bearing of political responsibility, and at the same time they claim, that they are right-wing. And the right is above all bearing personal political responsibility. And until the voters themselves in Bulgaria learn to demand responsibility from politicians who have lied to them, they will always get this. Here it is the responsibility of each one of us as a voter not to compromise simply because "he is from our party, he is our boy, now yes, he lied to us, etc., but we will forgive him, we will cry" and we will pull our hair out and then we will go again with our people to vote it”.
The biggest crime of these so-called right-wing parties is that there is nothing right-wing in them. Because we see that the right in economic terms should be maximum freedom for business, deregulation of processes – the point is that the state always regulates, but state regulation must provide equal rights and conditions for all, while here there is continuous state control, regulations in the direction of increasing state intervention and redistribution in favor of the oligarchs who stand behind the parties to the detriment of all other people from medium and small businesses, to each one of us as a taxpayer. And this is pure socialism, this is absolute leftism that breeds corruption. I have always repeated, and here, in this studio, I will repeat: corruption arises from this political elite, from the redistribution, from the superstate that these people implement. Because yes, the judiciary needs reform, but these people who create the corruption model have no way of reforming the judiciary in a direction where they will be held accountable.
Who clogs socio-political life: is it the oligarchic model?
Yes.
And what is the countermeasure?
I claim to be one of those people who, 20 years ago and more, said that the main problem we face and will have to fight is the nascent oligarchic model that has taken hold. From the very beginning of the Transition, things got going, but somewhere from the second half of the 90s, this oligarchic model, which was reproduced during each subsequent administration, began to take shape in a brutal way. And if you remember, at one time the thesis was: well, the mission of the UDF was to become members of the European Union and NATO, and now the UDF has finished its mission.
On the contrary, membership in the European Union and NATO were not the goals, they were means to achieve our goals of Bulgaria becoming a modern, developed European country, to be a normal country, because now we are not a normal country. And the behavior of the politicians is abnormal, but they also started driving the voters crazy. And the greatest crime of these people is that they have divided the democratic community, and part of that democratic community, of the people who did not identify with them, disgusted them and they do not want to participate in the political process. And the other part they converted, divided it into some party agitators who are ready to follow them in all their outrages.
A kind of reasoners, political reasoners?
Yes, like Tamagotchi. And now they are counting on that again. And they are very well aware that they are disgusting with the way they do politics: with the compromising materials, with the fact that the two parts of the "assembly” they accuse each other of serving traffickers, of being tied to mafia structures, to channels. There's no way these people didn't consume it, didn't know it while they were in the "assembly". These things haven't happened in the past weeks or month when the "assembly" fell apart. It shows the way in which they have partnered with each other, if it can be called a partnership at all – with blackmail, collecting kompromat for each other. And at some point, when the scandal happened, all this slop began to pour out. But it exists between them as a relationship.
The battle of one contraband against the other, the battle of one channel against the other, the battle of one oligarch against the other. Is that it?
Yes. And in fact, I have said it before, that what we call "democracy" is actually not democracy, it is not a clash between political concepts and ideological communities, but a clash between mafia clans. Oligarchic-corporate clans that fight in the most shameless way in front of the people. And they don't realize that both, having played this game, both ends of this sop are one thing – they are two sides of the same coin, they can't help but be complicit in what they do.
What do you count on from "Blue Bulgaria”? How will you manage to break through this oligarchic model that has become a national mentality?
Well, we are aware that it will be very difficult, because it is like a battle of David against Goliath, but we hope with the support of the voters to bring down this Goliath. Because we are aware that these people have a huge financial resource, hence the media, because the oligarchic model consists of the following: in addition to the oligarchs making parties, they also make their own media or have control in the big systemic media through advertising or one or another way. We see how the parliament achieved a majority against the ban on gambling advertising, and gambling is more dangerous than smoking, it is more dangerous than alcohol. It has a huge criminogenic potential, in many developed Western democracies you cannot advertise gambling.
Here, in Bulgaria, the gambling bosses are one of the big advertisers. The very technology of making election campaigns needs to change, although we will now still have to participate according to the rules that the oligarchy wrote, but we hope that there are enough people who are already disgusted, fed up with this, who have emancipated and can emancipate themselves from being hostages – they put them in a chart of accounts through polls, they create a picture where they determine which parties have a chance of getting into parliament, and they say: "Yes, you may like this party and these politicians, but let's not waste it now the votes, vote for those we give a chance to get in”.
Thus it renders the election meaningless. Then it is better to do pre-election polls and on the basis of the polls not to spend money on elections, to distribute quotas in the parliament – it renders the entire election process meaningless. Because in every way, and they use control over the media throughout the period – from one election to another, these politicians and these parties are constantly imposed with their presence. And now newly emerged political structures and political parties or coalitions will have within a month to try to make a breakthrough, but others will do their best to silence any different voice – that is the regulation. For example, I have seen in Great Britain, there only the public media actively participate in the election campaign. The private media are hardly involved, not to mention not at all involved in election campaigning.
Well, because the politicians in our country pay, and this is an opportunity for the media to make some leva during the campaigns.
Because a large part of the media is supported by oligarchs. Including the government by advertising funds with European funds corrupts the media.
There is no other way for the media to be financed.
In the West, the media is supported by its viewers, its listeners, etc. and they realize that if they engage them in party agitation, they will lose them that way.
Or with some minor topics that are not interesting.
And they have no economic interest in participating in politics. But here it is very dangerous, because we have such an intermediary, it is like going out to sell some goods, to produce something – if you don't get it into the big supermarkets, in the malls, so that it can seriously enter the market, your business will not succeed. And in fact, these big media and systems are like the malls or the big supers, the big department stores: if you can't get your goods in there, yes, you will do some business, but it will be limited, you won't be able to make big turnovers, large implementations.
In the course of this campaign, what problems are you facing?
Well, she didn't actually start. We are yet to enter it.
Yes, but in reality she is leaving.
I guess we will face these problems that we talked about: this monopolization of media space with the huge financial resources. It is an open secret that these parties spend times, tens of times more than what they declare. Because there is a legal regulation on how much money can be spent on a campaign. Campaigns with briefcases, with black boxes, etc., continue to be carried out in Bulgaria. And this totally discredits the democratic process in our country. And we are forced to have some media appearances, but in general we will rely on apostolic work with tours of places, with meetings with our structures, with our like-minded people.
But good things don't come easily and quickly. I am convinced that there is a need for this, and we feel it, and many people called even when we made "Blue Sofia" and they said: "Surely this will grow into "Blue Bulgaria" so that there will be someone to vote for, and these are people who were from our community and have been politically active for many years. For years before we created "Blue Sofia” and "Blue Bulgaria” I was wondering how to vote. This is terrible. When you were active, when you campaigned for people to participate, and when you go to the polls and wonder how to lie to vote for someone, to find an alibi for yourself, it makes you even more angry.
Have you prepared the sheets?
No, still to come. Now, we are a broad coalition, we are not one of those parties that have their lists ready and the leadership knows who will be removed and who will be included. With us, the process is more complicated because we are many organizations and the organizations themselves are internally democratic. But this is the effective way.
Prof. Konstantinov recently predicted in an interview that you have a chance to get at least 10-15 deputies into the national parliament and at least one MEP. So you will have the opportunity to make your breakthrough.
Of course. We do not participate on the Olympic principle of elections, we participate with the hope and expectation that we will achieve a good result. Now what it will be, that will be decided by the voters. But look, these people, you heard them pose some serious problems, have a concept of management? They could not all the time implement a coalition agreement that would give a detailed program. When a person stands for elections, comes into power, he must be ready from the first day, when he takes power, to start implementing his strategic priorities. These people have driven us crazy with their talk of judicial reform. Have you seen their bills in both previous and current parliaments? Even if they are not a majority to bring in a bill? Because judicial reform is not only changes in the Constitution, not to mention what changes they made in the Constitution.
We can already see this clearly.
Yes, they have already begun to deny themselves. It is not that good things were not done, for some of the changes such as for example the parliament to act permanently, I pleaded long before they decided to do it. Because they had different views, then they changed them. They change their strategic priorities every season. But they don't have a comprehensive vision, because judicial reform means changing the Judiciary Act, the Penal Code, the National Procedural Code – they don't have a whole package of ideas for what to do, they haven't even conceptually developed them.
They talk about judicial reform, but they don't have judicial reform. It is the same in all other areas. They talk about the reduction of the state administration, of this over-bureaucratized system, but whoever comes to power inflates it. Bulgaria, for example, can be governed by, let's not talk drastically, but instead of having 19 ministries, it can be governed by 11-12 ministries. Everyone who comes creates directorates, agencies, ministries, and restructuring is constantly being done not to optimize state and municipal administration, but to be able to circumvent the restrictions of the Labor Code and with these restructurings, everyone can change the "ladybugs" ; of the previous party government with its "ladybugs“.
What are your strategic priorities?
One of the things I told you: we really want the state to stop meddling in people's business, to redistribute. Of course, at the same time, we believe that education and health care are issues that are strategic priorities of the state and they cannot be left to be managed on a purely commercial basis, because this is one of the big mistakes so far. But in all other spheres, purely market mechanisms should operate and the state should cease to be involved. For example, the state also deals with banking – what is this Development Bank for?
Now, whether it will supply 5 companies of Peevski or 50 companies of Prokopiev, this does not fundamentally change the system: that all these business structures of the state are prerequisites for corruption and redistribution in favor of certain oligarchic circles. We have the idea to remove all this. And furthermore, to stop what these people are imposing: to oppose the European to the national. I am a European because I am a Bulgarian nationalist, because as Edmund Burke said: "The attachment to the common passes through the attachment to the individual community”. As I love Bulgaria because I love my family, my friends, the town where I grew up, so I love Europe because I am Bulgarian, because we are part of this European culture, of this Christian civilization that is Europe.
You cannot help but be attached to the small community and at the same time you are attached to the larger one – these are some kind of global janissaries who are ready to serve any cause for certain fees. But these are natural human principles. We should not oppose these things. It is in the Bulgarian national interest for Bulgaria to be part of the most powerful military-political union, because modern realities, modern concepts of security are collective. Gone are the times when Bulgaria could fight and defeat Turkey at the beginning of the last century. Now things are on a completely different basis.
Now there are many high-tech ways of war, and if Bulgaria is not a member of NATO and the European Union, can you imagine what could happen here, and we are right on the border between the East and the West with large aggressive empires with serious aspirations. If Bulgaria increases its military budget tenfold, a hundredfold, it cannot solve the problem of confronting it if we are not a member of this most powerful military-political union. And our arming is more a sign of solidarity and empathy, but we, of course, count on our security being protected within this alliance. This gives us the opportunity to achieve a hundred times greater security with less resources.
What are your chances as a political alternative? How can you break through and get into parliament? If you get into parliament, who will be your natural partners? Because you yourself will not yet have the necessary numbers there, both in terms of presence and influence, to change the picture.
Personally, I am against counting chances. One should speak and do what one believes in and what one thinks is good for society – if it gets support it will get realization. Because usually such accounts how, how much will I get, how will I get them, they are always non-working.
I'm far from those grocery bills about numbers, but how can you break inside and who will be your natural partner?
Now, the other question, I have always thought that it is too complex for a political force to be measured by its attitude towards other political parties, whether it be BSP, DPS, GERB and that tripartite PP-DB etc. A party and a politician must measure up to their own principles and values. And anyone who at a certain moment shares these main priorities and principles can be your partner – whether it will be in a specific vote, whether it will be in a management configuration. Now, of course, we have very serious value differences with the BSP. With DPS – I told you my view that this is the most corporate party, which is not that other parties do not do it, but with them it is the norm, and it is also a matter of some decency in relations.
But of course, if a good proposal is made, I have never had the scruples to support an idea that can be proposed even by the BSP, if I think it is the right decision for the country. But to search for some more serious long-term partners, it will naturally be with parties that are in the Euro-Atlantic democratic community. But we want to protect another vision in Europe: for the self-confidence that Bulgaria is an equal partner, that Bulgaria is not a small country, that Bulgaria is a country with strategic positions. After all, Christian civilization starts from our lands and reaches the West, we must have this self-confidence that we can change the European Union for the better with our ideas, with our values, with our visions. Because Europe, albeit to a lesser extent, faces the same problems that we face in Bulgaria.
And there is already a policy of redistribution of resources, which also gives rise to corruption. We see that there, too, an oligarchic system of government is being created, where through the systemic banks, through the European Bank, etc. certain sectors and certain policies are financed. And, for example, the Green Deal is very indicative of the fact that because of various lobbying interests, because we are all concerned about the environment, but what is being done does not protect the environment and ecology, it protects certain corporate lobbying interests, because of which Europe instead of be as it has always been leading as an economy and as a military resource, now Europe is already starting to lose competitiveness in both respects.
What sense does it make for you to litter your own productions with some such fictions, since you export all these productions to China, to India, to the USA, and these productions were not ecologically clean. By exporting them to China and other places, they become more economically efficient, but basically the environmental pollution is the same because we live in one environment, on one planet…
And it carries over.
So we see now the crisis with this aggression of Putin in Ukraine – all the failure of these policies shined through, and yet we see the persistence to maintain these policies, although I hope many of these mistakes will be revised, but unfortunately it had to be this monstrous war and hundreds of thousands of people died to some politicians in Europe start to realize that the path they are on is wrong. Because we cannot rely only on the USA to ensure the security of Europe. And the Americans are right when they raise the question that Europe should invest in armaments and not rely on the USA, because without the USA Putin could certainly reach the English Channel.
Thank God that his corrupt regime has ruined the army to such an extent that it is seen that he cannot solve the issue with Ukraine, let alone Europe. But in any case, all these postulates about nuclear energy must be reconsidered – you can't maintain an energy balance with renewable energy sources, wind and solar, you can't just do that. In Bulgaria, a targeted policy was conducted by the Russian energy lobbies, because 90% of our energy lobbies are tied to Russian direction, Bulgaria is the only country that does not develop its own energy resources, everything possible was done – it was not to impose a moratorium on shale gas exploration, and this happened during the so-called management of the right, the Euro-Atlantic management of GERB, supported by other parties and leaders who called themselves Euro-Atlantic.
We don't just do shale gas exploration, we don't do exploration for conventional mining. Romania and Turkey are already going to start mining in the Black Sea, we haven't started as humans to do research yet. There is no way they can receive in Romania and Turkey, only there are no deposits here – there is no logic in this, everything is done to sabotage it. In addition, there is overproduction of biomass in Bulgaria, our forests have overproduction. If the Bulgarian forest is maintained, only from its maintenance we can have a huge resource for obtaining biofuel. It is a natural resource that is not being used. And here you achieve several effects with one action, because the living forest is the forest that is maintained.
Because there are some such fundamentalists and extreme environmentalists who think that the forest should not be touched, but when the forest is not touched, it becomes a victim of fires, because the raw forest does not burn, the dry forest burns. 90% of the Bulgarian forests do not have the roads through which to maintain them, there are no sanitary corridors to protect the forest, if one part is set on fire, it will not burn the whole. Forest meadows, etc., also fall victim to this, because when the forest takes over them, unique plant species, herbs, and separately also a large part of the game are lost – for example the deer, for it there must be a forest meadow, it cannot live only in the forest. So, with various pseudo-ecological slogans, damage is being done to both the forest and the energy independence of Bulgaria.
We see that there is still no National Energy Strategy adopted by the Parliament, because the oligarchic circles and the energy mafia have no interest in allowing Bulgaria to have a clear, national strategy, because this takes away the opportunity to dominate situationally. We have no idea what we're going to do – they were going to close Maritsi, they have no idea what will be done, there are 10 different ideas, and this has been talked about for the second decade. There cannot be an energy strategy adopted by the parliament and a national consensus on it, because this is a matter of national security, a matter of sovereignty.
Will you prepare your strategy, your program for participation in the management of the country?
We will stand for these things I am telling you about and many more, we have yet to finalize the details of our management program. Of course, it will be more general, we have no pretensions to develop all the details, but the basic, basic principles are important. In addition, this obsession with constantly making revolutionary legislative changes, for which there are prerequisites in the Constitution, because in Bulgaria there is a unicameral parliament, but unfortunately this can only be changed with a Grand National Assembly, and parliamentary assemblies, such as this one, if start tampering with the Constitution and holding a Great National Assembly, may God protect us from such interventions, because we saw – they tend to make the Constitution their specific party interest.
We saw how they constituted the Procurator's College – what they jumped against the most, that there is party interference in the judicial system and staffing in the prosecutor's office, they legalized it with the changes in the Constitution, and the idea was to divide the triple coalition DPS-GERB-PP-DB, since they could not they will find out whose the chief prosecutor will be, or rather, the progressive forces could not take the chief prosecutor from DPS, they decided to share it through the Prosecutor's College, which will dominate, it will staff. And because it is a collective body, there will be, for example, two from PP-DB, two from GERB, one from DPS, you can also let one from BSP, for luxury. What does this mean: that each party will have control over the prosecutor's office and we we will expect to be charged with a general crime.
This can't happen. They want to guarantee that the very institution which, according to the Constitution, brings charges for a crime of a general nature, will be under party control. This shatters any illusion that political crimes can be held accountable. But it is very important to stop this arbitrariness in the parliament, this chaos. It cannot be changed, and this is quite an old practice, but it is strengthened within a plenary session, a law cannot be changed several times – it creates chaos. This shows that, firstly, these people lack vision and capacity. They try and they work purely as lobbyists. I have faced this when I was a representative of the people. So, the ruling majority, because it does not have two chambers, does not have the American principle, according to which, for example, 1/3 of the composition is replaced every two years, in order to have continuity, to have conservatism.
Their Constitution is very well thought out in this respect, it has two chambers. Here, in Bulgaria, every majority, in order to serve the interests of the business circles and oligarchs around them, or their own interest, begins to change – you remember that the Electoral Code was changed every time before an election – this is the level and mentality of those who ruled until now: they change the law, they see that they did not do it like the people, that despite the change they cannot serve their oligarchs, come on, after a month they start fixing it again. When you change the laws so often, and the one who has the specific power changes them, it's like you don't have any laws.
It's like you and I playing cards, I change the rules according to what card comes to me at the moment. At one point I will say "Ace is strongest”, then if they give me sevens I will say: "Seven is strongest”. This is the way Bulgaria is governed: everyone changes the rules. We don't have a law-making process like I've seen in the UK, for example, because I lived there for a while. So, first of all, there are laws there for 200 years that have not been touched. The second thing is that when a legislative change starts, it is a very slow process: first there is a public discussion. This is where laws are changed, then people find out how the law has changed, even though they supposedly passed a regulation saying this shouldn't happen: Regulations Act, etc., including providing for laws to go through a certain impact assessment – nothing is done, the very laws they have passed are not followed. But there, for example, the laws, when a change is foreseen, it is assigned to expert communities: to the big leading universities, to specialists.
And they work out when there is some political vision that something needs to be changed, but they give it to experts. Who makes the laws in Bulgaria? 90% of the laws are drawn up by the state administration, because it has the capacity. And what comes out: that the executive writes the rules to work by. Because the meaning of the separation of powers is for the parliament to determine the rules that set limits and frameworks for the executive power. This is part of that balance that is being struck between the authorities. And in fact, in Bulgaria, this has been imposed, and it has been since the very beginning of the Transition – 90% Look and you will see that it is very rare that any member of the people introduces any text, separate article or bill – everything is prepared by the government. And because the ministers do not have the capacity to do it and the deputy ministers, these projects are prepared by the head of the departments, directorates in the relevant ministries. And they write their own rules.
Are you optimistic that you will be able to change this picture?
I believe that this will change because people want something to happen, they want change to happen. Everyone sees the absurdity of what is happening in the state. And at least we have to what I see as problems, and colleagues, to put these things. Because when the true things are purposefully said, those that are indisputable, those who have ruled so far cannot oppose them. They pose many of these problems and promise to solve them, but when they come to power they do the exact opposite. Because everyone swears that they will reduce the administration, that they will remove this overregulation, that they will work in the interest of medium and small businesses for transparency, for fairness – they use these clichés and when they come to power, they do the exact opposite.
And look at what the fight is: not to change the mechanism by which the regulators work, not to change the mechanism by which the judiciary works, but how to allocate quotas. PP-DB have shown that they want to govern without GERB in Gerbaji style. They wanted to remove GERB to take their levers. Each is fighting to take the corruption levers from the other, privatize its model and even upgrade it. Everyone who came through this transition has continuity with the corrupt practices of the previous one, and further develops them, creatively builds on them, and that is why we have already reached this bottom. They came in the name of protecting parliamentarism, and the Constitution was even changed to strengthen the role of parliament. And so they did it, that now the parliament has historically the lowest support than before. They brought back parliamentarism and brought it back so that the parliament as an authority collapsed even more.