EKIP– Expert Club for Economics and Politics A Different Opinion
Have you ever wondered how a person like Boyko Borisov can propose an agreement like the Istanbul Convention for ratification by the parliament?
How is it that his Foreign Minister Ekaterina Zaharieva signed the Convention in Turkey in 2016, his Deputy Minister of Justice Desislava Ahladova promised at a roundtable with various feminist and LGBT organizations that the convention would be ratified by the end of 2017, and his Minister of Justice Tsetska Tsacheva announced that because of the Convention, a definition of “gender identity” would be introduced into Bulgarian legislation. Why did his Tsetso Tsvetanov make such serious efforts to break through the resistance to the convention in the National Assembly and in the arena of public discussions?
How did the man who ran around with the fat slice, the graduate of the Simeonovo School, who lived through the 90s in a wrestling style, the one with the flowery descriptions of his own PKP chairwoman of his parliament, with the reputation that if you were a poop and visited him, they would start "squirting" you - suddenly decide to care about the more fragile part of humanity and the hardships of the differently-abled?
How could this right-wing, conservative, nationalist, patriotic, devout, Orthodox government - whoops! - almost ratify the Istanbul Convention without batting an eye, under the mentoring gaze of the aforementioned feminist and LGBT organizations? How could GERB and the Council of Europe have already saved us from violence against women if the Christian grassroots and nationalist opposition had not made a fuss?
Those who do not know the customs of their Bulgarian neighbors may say that it is simply a matter of a democratic imperative. Bulgarians no longer tolerate the homophobia and Balkan macho-chauvinism of the patriarchy, and like any other politician, our prime minister must comply. The masses want an end to retrograde customs, and Borisov, sensitive to popular sentiment, follows the will of his fellow citizens. It sounds almost realistic.
But it is not. Statistics show that 78% of Bulgarians are against "same-sex marriage", which for sociologists is a key measure of the attitude towards homosexuals. And no matter how strong and generously funded the pink lobbies are, such skepticism is not overcome quickly and easily. We are far from fulfilling the will of the people.
In other words, the sun-prime minister, by trying to push through the Istanbul Convention on his own soil, is going against not only his own upbringing and worldview, against the cosplay political orientation of his cabinet, but also against his crucial electoral interests. How can we explain such illogical behavior?
Whoever pays, orders the music.
In fact, he himself has told us where such moves come from, including most recently at the beginning of the Covid crisis. The answer is simple and tragically familiar from our own history. His versions have played out countless times in the past. Today's version goes like this:
To sit on a feather pillow and keep the pipeline for Kaiser's grease open, you have to listen. If you listen to the bosses on the Brussels-Berlin-Paris axis, the grease flows calmly and ends up in the Boyana drawer. It also goes into many other drawers whose owners keep you in power. Sometimes you even throw something from the table to the boys with the coffee, to motivate them to passionately attack the smart-beautiful genders, because they are vilely trying to introduce progressive, degenerate laws into our legal peace and pollute the Bulgarian race with homo-feminism. And more and more often, it turns out, you don't even need to waste your scraps - there is enough useful idiocy in modern right-wing Bulgarian thought. It will protect you for free, from imbecility.
For the last time, Borisov knocked his head against the instruments of world globalism - Kristalinka Georgieva and Christine Lagarde - as a result of their promises about the down pillow and the tube with grease, through his repeated 180-degree turn on the issue of abolishing the Bulgarian lev and the currency board and replacing them with the Brussels euro. In February 2020, after a persistent campaign that channeled public discontent against the euro and broke through the media umbrella of Turkish economists, BB agreed to hold public talks and discussions until some form of consensus was reached on the issue of erasing our 140-year-old national currency. Unfortunately, the Covid crisis followed, calls from the two Crises, a change of position, media blacklists and too many articles by Georgi Angelov.
As a result, today the lev is already in YAREM II. The only political salvation for him and the board is a successful referendum. Somehow naively, Borisov had even believed in the globalist whisper. Not only about the fat planned by the Kaiser, which has not yet come, but also about the fact that, despite the mood, everyone will suddenly be so happy that our national currency is coming to an end, and our banking system will be dependent on the Eurocrats, that they will forget about the Gerbera transgressions. In this regard, there was an attempt at an economic "boulyo-boulyo" in the media - timid political exclamations about the "great victory", but that was it. There was no party for Borisov in the waiting room.
The curious thing is that things actually turned in the opposite direction. Instead of the European Union, with its ignoring of the criteria for YAREM II, with the promised Kaiser's fat and with its full support (according to Bozhkov-Domuschiev), consolidating Borisov in power, it brought things to the point that even smart and beautiful protesters came out of their Brussels hypnosis. Hristo Ivanov himself shook off something that in a lecture to the youth DSB in November 2019 I called "The Hristo Ivanov Mistake".
Time to sober up?
Namely, that someone from the Brussels-Berlin-Paris axis wants or can save us from the scumbag oligarchy. That the more we hand over independence to a federal EU, the more legality and a European way of life there will be in Bulgaria. On the contrary, even Hristo today realizes that in fact the Union not only does not hinder the regime, but subsidizes it, gives it the same fat that the Bulgarian Nationalist Party brags about. Here is what the chairman of "Yes, Bulgaria" tells Politico:
“Brussels and Berlin must take responsibility for helping the Bulgarian judiciary and other key institutions be seized by the country’s oligarchic mafia. With their lax oversight of judicial reforms combined with the fueling of corruption with European funds in the EU, they have many questions to answer.”
He continues by developing the thesis that we, the critics of the EU sinking into socialism, have long used, namely that from the Eurocrats we see imperial behavior and protection of their local feudal lord on the border in the person of the Bulgarian Prime Minister, not interest in legality and prosperity for the Bulgarians. Ivanov agrees with his "green" colleague Vladislav Panev, who is already working in the right direction, by calling the European funds "life-saving blood in the veins of the mafia". Even if all this is purely political positioning as a counter to GERB and its Brussels support, a new page has been turned in the political communication of the smart-beautiful. We cannot be sure that this is a realignment according to Steve Davis, but we are certainly observing a very curious situation of rare critical speech towards the otherwise deified European project.
What is worrying about the capacity of the yellow-clad liberal leader is that the unconditional support for Borisov and the lack of any desire to support reforms in Bulgaria have been known to Hristo Ivanov since his time in the early GERB governments. Here is what he tells us in the same interview:
"I wanted to see if, if there was a real reformer in the Ministry of Justice, that would be enough to get European support. My final conclusion is that there was no help from Frans Timmermans, who was responsible for this as Vice-President of the European Commission. I tried to draw the attention of the competent institutions to the abuses of EU funds, and they turned out to be even more generous to Bulgaria. Someone in Berlin is making cynical calculations - a billion more or less, who cares! As long as you receive services from Borisov and keep him stable, who cares about some bribes?"
The comments of the President of the Supreme Court of Cassation, Lozan Panov, who spoke to Spiegel magazine, are also indicative:
"I myself have sent reports on the state of the judicial system in Bulgaria to the EC Commission many times. I think they know about the situation in Bulgaria there."
You can compare it [the state of EU law monitoring, author's note] to a cancer patient whose vital organs are affected, but every time he goes to the doctor, he is told that he is healthy – and they give him candy. In the EU, these candy are subsidized by billions of euros. They contribute to the growth of cancer in Bulgaria. That is why people are now taking to the streets. They want to fight cancer.
They don't want to hear about the tumor and the candy in the European Parliament either, where another farce was held, supposedly a discussion of the situation in Bulgaria, at which the EPP did not allow their favorite green son - Radan Kanev - to say anything against Borisov's government. Microphones were turned off, Brussels sycophants were jabbering, the audience fought their sleep. Or maybe with their anger, with yet another disappointment, with the realization that they too had made the "Hristo Ivanov Mistake". I just can't wait to watch when the show in the eurozone and the banking union starts. I'll also be curious to see if more people will then accept Farage's talk about the USSR.
Mentioning the former great socialist union, I believe that today carrying EU flags in protest is like carrying Soviet flags at rallies against the Bulgarian Communist Party and Todor Zhivkov from the early 1990s. In fact, various banners appeared with slogans that exude the same disappointment as Hristo Ivanov's - "EU - are you blind?", "EU, come and see how they spend your money!", "EU: Finance your mafia", "Aren't you embarrassed by the corrupt guy, Mrs. Merkel?". A kind of culmination of this dissatisfaction were the protests in front of the German embassy and the European Commission representation in Sofia. In practice, we are observing the disappointment of the smart-beautiful yellow-paved man with his own political naivety. Unfortunately, a large part of the contingent with a central Sofia spirit still suffers from "Hristo Ivanov's Mistake" - of course, it's stupid to wait for someone to fix you from the outside, but Munich is so clean and tidy. How could a German foundation, based in such a nice and tidy city, create and subsidize a monster like the GERB Party?
The rise of cohesive mutro-progressivism
The article Kick it like Borissow in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung answers some of these questions plaguing the Sofia citizen:
"Sometime in 2001, Borisov caught the attention of Wolfgang Glesker. Glesker, now retired and living in Florida, headed the Sofia office of the Hans Seidel Foundation for many years. This is a foundation that can be euphemistically said to be close to the CSU. It can also be said that the Hans Seidel Foundation is the international arm of the party that governs Bavaria. Glesker discovered earlier than others that Borisov would become Bulgaria's new strongman and reported to Munich: We have to bring him in! And so it happened.
The Hans Seidel Foundation recommended that he (Borisov, editor's note) use his popularity and found a party without naming it that. Borisov did so. He traveled the country, spoke to people, and united them behind him. Thus was born the movement "Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria", or "GERB" for short. The Hans Seidel Foundation supported the rallies organized by Borisov around the country, as well as the later transformation of GERB into an ordinary party. Large passages from the party program, statutes, and internal rules are literal translations of the relevant texts of the CSU. They were translated by Antoaneta Nikolaeva Baycheva, a project manager and later representative of the head of the Hans Seidel Foundation in Sofia. In 2009, in the first parliamentary elections in Bulgaria after joining the EU in 2007, GERB became the first political force by a large margin, and Borisov became Prime Minister. Antoaneta Baycheva is today the Consul General of Bulgaria in Munich.
The ties between GERB and the CSU are becoming increasingly close - and yet in the refugee crisis Borisov does not follow his pioneers from Munich, but the German Chancellor. He quite openly and loudly praises Angela Merkel.
…Last week, Borisov was in Istanbul for talks with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan…after the meeting , Borisov said he hoped realism would defeat nationalism and populism.”
The relationships we describe are logically not one-sided. There is a receipt against the fat and German care, and it includes everything that the center considers important to be spent on Bulgarian soil. Pressing a button, raising a hand, putting a rubber stamp and all their derivatives are the modus operandi for the representatives of the Gerber-PatreOtic government before the bosses in Brussels. The most unquestioning surrender possible to the powerful EU lobbies - for climate, for gender policies, for tax equalization, for children's strategies, for refugees, for transportation, etc. Complete cohesion between the center and the colony, wholesale import of all progressive social policies from monetary issues to how many genders prisoners learn in first grade.
Borisov - the European courtesan
Agreeing with me, in an article on the pages of Sega, Petar Terziev calls Borisov a “European courtesan” and specifies that “the Bulgarian dictionary gives the following synonyms for courtesan: flatterer, lackey, sycophant, hypocrite, servile”. Further, Terziev talks about how the European leaders find the Bulgarian leader to be trouble-free and ready for “full synchronization”. At the end of the article, we also read the following sentences:
"The unifying symbol of the protest marches are the national flags, but here and there the European flag also appears. Perhaps some of the dissatisfied harbor hope that Europe will help them. But it is blind and deaf."
It is blind and deaf precisely because it gets everything it can ask for from the Bulgarian authorities. Every time national sovereignty has to be surrendered, it is done willingly. Every time a new portion of social engineering is prepared to be poured down the throats of the next generations, ours run to fulfill it. When the interests of the Bulgarians on the one hand and the Eurocrats on the other are in conflict, the choice is always on the side of those with the fat.
The discrepancy comes from the fact that those in power in our country are trying to hide their transgressions, to pass them through closed offices, because they know what the reaction will be. Let us remember not only the Istanbul Convention, but also how covertly the Menda Stoyanova Amendment would have passed, which compromised the leva and the board, leaving them at the mercy of secret Frankfurt meetings. It did not sneak in secretly only because Stefan Antonov from the Economist magazine caught her and brought her to light. By chance, then his magazine went bankrupt, and someone who sounds like Borisov said some things about the owners of the same magazine in a leaked recording. He was going to crush them. Coincidences.
Unlike our traitors who try to hide in corners, the Brussels rulers prefer publicity – to humiliate their pages on the one hand, and on the other, to receive the love of the simple Eastern European people for freeing them from the burdens of patriarchy, power plants and national symbols. In a sense, we, ordinary Bulgarians, are asked to give the same thing that Borisov and his associates give: sincere love and passionate admiration. European progressivism must not only be accepted, but loved. Let's move towards one whole. Cohesion. The opponents of this path are populists and nationalists. Bad people.
We are talking about nationalists, but let's not forget that they are Borisov's coalition partners. Isn't it the nationalists who should defend the sovereignty, preserve the country's independence, fight for its symbols and its own historical path? They may have sold Bulgarian passports to half of Kosovo there, but still Angel Dzambazki solemnly declared recently at a celebration:
"There is nothing better than Bulgarians remembering that our flag is important. There is nothing more important than people starting to wear national costumes in the squares. When we wore them, they called us retrograde, outdated..."
He started to list the national symbols, Angel, but wisely stopped. The fact that VMRO signed and sealed the loss of the national currency is a small detail, who cares. The important thing is to run into trouble, brandish the guns from the cinema set, and finally collect the patch from the Euro parliament. Who decides your legislation, who controls the government of your country, do you have your own money at 140 years old, these are details. Uh, Europe of nations.
From all this larp and cosplay, the libertarians have to save the Bulgarian lev. Not that the patriots in the cabinet couldn't say something, let alone leave the coalition, but who is going to give speeches in Strasbourg? Who is going to help Albanians find jobs in Germany with the appropriate Bulgarian IDs? Who is going to give a full and accurate analysis of the political situation in Wisconsin? Who is going to collect the commissions for new planes? It's not like Bulgaria has realized its biggest loss of sovereignty in the last 30 years under a super patriotic and nationalist cabinet. I'm waiting for the conservative wave to overwhelm us at any moment!
Ясно е, че прогресивизмът намира хиляда други канали, през които да навлезе на родна земя. Консумираме западни медии и забавления, американското посолство праща хомофобската бг полиция да пази гей парада, средства текат от големи фондове за жени, птици и ЛГБТ, а Радан Кънев се влюбва в зелената сделка след няколко срещи в Брюксел. Но това е нищо в сравнение с Борисов, който приема Стратегия за детето, обричаща следващите поколения на най-ранна индоктринация в правата вяра. Повече от десетилетие не съм ученик, но дори ние в 12 клас зубрихме „институциите на ЕС“ и си пускахме одата на радостта. Толкова ме възмущаваше това, че на секундата изтрезнявах.
All this for MORE FAT.
We live in a political paradox. At home, the ruling group of larpers chew on gypsy crime, push around grandmothers in headscarves and wave flags. At the same time, they betray every possible cause they should be fighting for. We have turned the covenant of “deeds, not words” like a trouser pocket, to its breaking point. Principles should not be macaroni, but our principles are like mud between the cobblestones of Brussels. They are trampled by the guarded servants of the new empire, leading by the nose a spineless herd of hookah-patriots to legitimize the whole new federal farce.
Next to them, the self-confessed intelligent Sofia burgher waves EU flags and asks the good old-fashioned people from abroad to fix things. If only it could be like in Germany, so nice and clean (without the ghettos there), with electronic services, because there are already craft beers. We will not stand in lines to pay the extortion to the scumbag state, ya. They do not yet realize that if you apply today's European policy to post-communist Bulgaria, you will always get versions of the same thing - an oligarchy, serving klutzes and human cattle, used for taxes and EU funds.
There is no room for despondency, however. The clever Westerners have driven the whole herd to the brink with wonderful decisions on fiscal, monetary and social issues. It is time to prepare for their long night and our new morning.
