Bulgaria – Mother or Evil Stepmother of Bulgarian Diaspora Mind the horns!

At the initiative of Eurochicago, the information portal for Bulgarians worldwide, an address was sent to Prime Minister Boyko Borisov demanding a reform in the State Agency for Bulgarians Abroad (SABA). There was also a petition in support of this request, which is gaining more and more signatures. A true virtual revolution of Bulgarians across the globe is emerging.

Disappointment with the State policy towards Bulgarians abroad is gaining momentum in recent years. The true rift was caused by the broken promises of current Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva to hold a public competition for Chair of SABA. Despite the loudly announced campaign, none of the promises has been fulfilled. There is no other element of publicity in the pseudo-competition than the posting of the candidates’ concepts for the development of SABA and the delayed transcript of their hearings.

First, the competences and the knowledge of the members of the committee, formed by Kuneva, remained unclear. How and under what criteria they have assessed the ideas of several PhDs in history, ethnology, law and public administration and one PhD in demography? Bivol already revealed that one of the candidates graduated in the USSR and was recruited for the Communist State Security by Petko Sertov.

According to our unofficial information that applicant has been one of the favorites of Deputy Prime Minister Meglena Kuneva.

SABA in the shadow of the backstage rule

It is not clear how the procedure of admission of candidates has been implemented with a view of fulfilling the criteria of the issued decree for them to have a proven track record in the field of Bulgarians abroad, to have college education and to speak and write fluently at least one foreign language. Third – there was no public hearing. Fourth – the report that Kuneva has presented to Prime Minister Borisov with a proposal for the appointment of Chair of SABA, based on the results of the competition, is still secret. Even the results are “secret”.

Information that the position has been promised to a member of the Patriotic Front coalition, and in particular to the regional coordinator in Veliko Tarnovo of one of the coalition partners (VMRO), Boris Vangelov Borisov, even before the public competition was held, has long circulated among the public and the media. Because of that promise, there are reasonable grounds to believe that someone has been foisted from above and the competition was just staged. Anyone who is interested in the performance of “our man” can read his concept from the shorthand transcripts and then conclude whether his marks correspond to reality.

There is talk around the Agency’s water coolers about words attributed to the leader of the VMRO party Krasimir Karakacanov that the government could be jeopardized if the appointment of his protégé does not materialize. This threat gained popularity during the parliamentary vote of the new foreign loan in the amount of 16 billion levs. The bluff did not work, but Borisov seems to have realized this attempt to twist his arm.

The vampire of the Comintern

The question arises why is Kuneva ready to pay the cost of such a scandal and humiliation by promoting namely the candidacy of the VMRO member for Chair of SABA? The explanation stemming from the so-called “passport mafia” has long been documented and analyzed. It turned out, however, that the friendship between Kuneva and Karakacanov is quite a lasting one. Well-informed sources from VMRO said that in 2011 Kuneva has visited on several occasions the VMRO headquarters on Pirotska Street in Sofia, and support for her candidacy for president of the country has been discussed there. Long-term narrow-party and lobbying interests, that have their genetics in common Communist secret services past, are still emerging in the current interaction between Kuneva’s right-wing Reformist Bloc coalition and Karakachanov’s Patriotic Front. These interests are more lasting than the shadow cast on the pro-European image of Kuneva over the interaction with Karakachanov’s populist formation. This interaction seems not to worry the patriot Karakacanov either, despite the fact that one of Kuneva’s closest associates – Yonko Grozev – was a longtime lawyer of the anti-Bulgarian organization OMO “Ilinden”. Kuneva’s Secretary won a guilty verdict against Bulgaria in Strasbourg because the country refused to recognize the Macedonist organization that has long been financed by the Yugoslav embassy. Apparently, for the current government, precisely the lawyer of the anti-Bulgarian OMO “Ilinden” seemed the most appropriate person to take the post of Bulgarian judge in this same court in Strasbourg, where he represented earlier the neo-communist Macedonists. The daughter in law (Kuneva) of the Secretary of the Central Committee of the Bulgarian Communist Party, Ivan Pramov, has now a right-hand man who is protecting fiercely the Comintern theory of “Macedonian nation”, and he will arbitrate the quota of Bulgaria in the European Court. The Khmer Rouge, who have mutated under the guise of various right-wing political projects, will continue to secretly and gradually play their underground, harmful role against our national ideals and interests. The “Patriots” shyly bowed their heads and did not dare to criticize this even on their website. The latter is very indicative of the authenticity of such patriotism.

Criminal acts against Bulgarian expats

The expected heavy losses are already a fact. Two of the most prominent Bulgarian organizations abroad – the Bulgarian Cultural Club “Skopje” in Macedonia and the Cultural Information Center “Bossilegrad” in Serbia, were removed weeks ago from SABA’s register. The Bulgarian centers, created with so much effort precisely in Serbia and Macedonia, were hit hard by the Bulgarian State itself. Kuneva is the one responsible for the initiative and she justified herself in the Parliament by saying that these organizations were arbitrarily granting Bulgarian origin to citizens of Serbia, Macedonia and Albania. In other words, they were making Bulgarian people who otherwise were not Bulgarians. This explanation, if it was not so absurd, sounds more than cynical. Besides being racist, if it is true, it is contrary to basic human rights. On one hand Kuneva’s Yonko Grozev protects the right of pure Bulgarians to identify themselves as “Macedonians” and to create a party that wants territorial division of Bulgaria, on the other hand, Kuneva dismantles the only Bulgarian organizations in the former Yugoslavia, because they dared to consider as Bulgarians people who were (according to her) not such, but wanted to be. For similar activity these organizations would be bestowed with highest State awards in countries like Israel or the United States that create their prosperous nations namely on the foundation of the right of self-determination, regardless of racial, ethnic and national origin. But for the heirs of the Comintern doctrine of fragmentation and estrangement of Bulgarians abroad, such nonsense is completely normal. Because of the pogrom launched by Kuneva, more than 500 applications for Bulgarian citizenship have already been canceled last month. Bulgarians from Macedonia, who are more Bulgarians than our lawmakers, write to us desperate posts in social networks: “We are not recognized in Macedonia and Bulgaria does not recognize us – where are we to go then!?”
Fortunately, justice still prevailed, because on March 6 the Sofia Administrative Court declared illegal the actions of SABA in removing the Bulgarian organizations from its register.

This time around, are there going to be some people convicted and sentenced for anti-national activity jeopardizing our national security? Or everything will again be laundered in the laundromat of Communist impunity over the most sinister cases of eradicating the Bulgarian nation.

Quo Vadis?

This is why the patience of Bulgarians abroad ended and they finally asked the Prime Minister to launch a reform of SABA. However, as Eurochicago wrote, those who have to implement the reform do not know how. As a first step statesmanship thinking as a policymaker must be reformed, and then comes the reform of the Agency.

“I have said it countless times, and I repeat again now- it is not important who is in power in Bulgaria, if people in power have brotherly attitude towards us. But a national strategy is needed for this. And this poses again the question, if it exists, why it is not implemented, and if there isn’t one, why not create it?” This is what the Chairman of the Bulgarian Cultural Club Skopje Lazar Mladenov thinks of SABA and the general policy of Bulgaria regarding Bulgarians abroad. He gave an extensive interview for the Information Center of the Ministry of Defense.

Mladenov has been fighting for years for the right to identity of our compatriots in Vardar Macedonia, where the pro-Serbian ubiquitous anti-Bulgarian ideology and hate of our country and nation still rein. As one of the authentic fighters for the right to call oneself Bulgarian in the early 21st century, Mladenov is also one of the people who have a very exact criterion for the quality of our national policy.

The first possible step in this reform, which Borisov can make, is to take the portfolio “Bulgarians Abroad” from Kuneva and assign it to another Deputy Prime Minister. Only then, reform ideas that were launched by some of the candidates for Chair of SABA can be implemented. With her actions, Kuneva is trying to stop them. And we must stop the vicious “Communist-snitch” moves to restrict Bulgarian ethnicity only to the artificial boundaries of our crippled homeland as this can somehow keep Bulgarians in our depopulating country dependent. But there is no way they will manage to control and manipulate all Bulgarians worldwide. There are Bulgarians, who have rediscovered Bulgaria as their spiritual homeland, and they will not agree to have it wiped out over the greedy interests of politically-mutated Communist activists at all levels.

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