/ world today news/ “Deputy hunger strike”, 30 years later
The hunger strike of the 39 deputies in the spring and summer of 1991, 30 years after which has passed, is a unique phenomenon for Eastern European transitions. The history of the 7th Grand National Assembly (1990-1991) was generally marked by the continuous purposeful efforts to erode the extremely difficult to build pro-constitutional majority. It was a great battle for Bulgaria. A battle that BSP won but failed to develop.
On April 4, 1991, 44 SDS deputies with a bluff declaration demanded the dissolution of the parliament. The first shot against the still unfinished constitution was fired on May 16. SDS did not manage to develop concrete normative objections against the emerging draft text. There was sharp reaction to the definition of Bulgaria as a “social” state and it did not enter the text, although it was mentioned as a national goal in the preamble, in the spirit of the modern triad “democratic, social and legal” state. After all, even according to the Turkish constitution, the state is defined as social.
In our country, the supposedly “moderate forces” began to recite the ultra-liberal thesis of a “state without a constitutional definition”. The general public never understood that this was against its basic interests.
The Bulgarian radical right
In 1990-1991, a bouquet of poisonous ideas with a focus on the preparation of the new constitution and the activity of the VII Supreme Court as a political institution captured a radical right-wing minority. The nation listened to his words and became auto-intoxicated. The anti-constitutional poison was well absorbed by our social organism. Neither then, nor in the following three decades, this minority was not able to exceed one third of the citizens, but it effectively managed to block dozens of positive public intentions and legislative initiatives, countering them with bluffs that satanize the constitution. The extreme right has won the freedom to process public opinion with all forces and means, through all informational and educational channels. At first under the false flag of fighting the “spectacular falsification of the ’90 Elections’, and then – for the “communist” (“Dertlilov” from Dertliev – Lilov) constitution. Radical anti-constitutionalism broke out in Bulgaria, which blocked the serious political and legal debate during the next decades. There are more right-wing parties in Europe, but none as wacky as in our country.
The mystifications and satanization during the Supreme Court ran along several lines: against the BSP as history and as modernity, against the projects for a new constitution that did not come from the right (the right did not propose its official project at all), and in general against every meaningful decision that the Supreme Court was about to take. Already in the first weeks of the life of the Seventh Supreme Court, the efforts to discredit the body of the constituent power and ultimately to dissolve the assembly, without fulfilling its mission, strongly erupted.
The day of leaving the parliament is bright
black and brown date
in our national calendar. This was an attempt to kill the budding Bulgarian democracy.
The general public proved susceptible to the insinuating presentation of parliamentary developments and constitutional debate. One illustration – people without strict political convictions, the entire right and some part of the intelligentsia willingly adopted the ironic slang for the chosen ones: “the Great Ones”. Radical right-wing anti-constitutional populism broke out in Bulgaria and it has not been overcome even today.
In the end, the pro-constitutional forces prevailed – the Constitution was signed by 313 deputies out of a total of 400 – a remarkable result, but in the editorial teams of the media, the ratio was different. The ability to over-mobilize an anti-constitutional platform was extremely strong.
The 39 left the Supreme Court under the false pretext that the majority there did not want to accept the Constitution, that it was only delaying (“to gain time”?). On the contrary, the left-wing and centrist MPs most wanted a new basic law to be adopted. Long after July 12, 1991, the 39 rejected the Constitution because it was “undemocratic and communist.” Mean!
The hunger strike failed, but its poisonous effects were not overcome. Constitutional nihilism is still alive today. And then – 30 years ago, and today the left paradox is this: the left forces maintain socially more productive, correct positions, but they do not know how to defend them in front of the public. The leftist positions somehow remain at “Positano” 20, in DUMA, now also in BSTV, but they do not reach two thirds of the nation.
When, in the first half of 1991, the VII Supreme Court drafted the new democratic Constitution and when it adopted it on July 12, 1991, it was drawn up and evaluated according to the best examples of European constitutionalism, of European parliamentary republics. As a text and as a normative substrate, it is consonant with the main democratic constitutional principles and achievements of the modern world, harmonizes and reproduces the main international legal acts on human rights. But it turned out that this was not at all decisive in the construction of the public judgment about her. Public misunderstanding and brutal negativity towards the Constitution, as a rule, dominated all public (i.e. media) discussions.
The most important feature in the adoption and approval of the 1991 Constitution is that it was signed and adopted without winning over the public, without taking place the debate about the new ideas in it, about its democracy and marketability, and in this sense – for its “non-socialism”, if we understand it as a pushback from the nineteenth-century model.
It is evident from the National Round Table throughout the process of drafting the Constitution
the idea of consent
Consensus political philosophy is something extremely important in a modern democratic political system. Consensualism is not an abstract moralistic call for understanding. It is a practical principle. And today its first manifestation is the general recognition of the Constitution. It is the basis of consensus, the basis of political and institutional understanding. But before the policy is negotiated, it is necessary to recognize the equality of the negotiators, and from there – to agree on the form and procedure by which the policy will be implemented. Consent is essentially desired, but it is not always possible and necessary. It is normal for political forces and actors to judge things differently. They argue and compete about what is best – according to their values and experience. However, agreement on the form, on the procedure, on the equal right to participate in the political debate and in governance is always desirable and attainable.
In Bulgaria, during these 30 years, formations and activists of the right contested in principle
the right of the Left to participate in the debate
to propose policies, to govern. This is the most important reason for national transition failures.
The Constitution was evaluated both at the beginning and later “as a whole”, as a document of institutionality, compiled by some political forces – its signatories. Therefore, it was accepted as a political project with the suspicion that a text was created that went against the interests of other political trends. The new ideas that entered it gave the Bulgarian people numerous opportunities for democratic action that people in other Western societies have received after decades of hard debates and sharp socio-political struggles. And there they learned to value and protect them, while in our country many people perceived them somehow as “dropped down from above”, “for free”, created as if by themselves. New ideas of state law are created in the course of debates, contestation and inevitable clashes. The radical right in Bulgaria has built a regime of intolerance towards all leftist and patriotic positions, if it has not previously conquered them institutionally.
Using the novelty of ideas as a coherent explanation of whether or not they will take hold does not answer the question of how new ideas themselves came about (by themselves) and why old ideas fail. This is part of the reasons for today’s drama of constitutionalism in Bulgaria, and of Bulgaria itself. The political success – the adoption of the Constitution – was not developed into a civil success. Venomous anti-constitutionalism was not born with the hunger strike, but it gave it an unsuspected power. The creation of the current Bulgarian Constitution is a practical lesson for our society on how democracy actually functions. Not as a counterpoint, but to outline contemporary realities, I will quote a statement by the esteemed Henry Kissinger, a great realist diplomat. Years ago, he gave instructions: “We will do the illegal things immediately, for the unconstitutional things we will need a little more time.”
Anti-constitutionalism is
social vice
at least as dangerous as criminal crime. However, the public interest and public judgment on a number of unconstitutional acts are much more lenient than on trivial offenses. This is a paradox that needs to be understood. People are sensitive to the outrages that the neighbor or the mayor does, but as a rule it is difficult for them to grasp unconstitutionality as an excessive trampling of the legal order. Moreover, unconstitutional actions are often publicly justified with dubious grounds of (illegal) “expediency”.
The hunger strike of 1991 failed, but it damaged the entire transition. It established a spirit of legal nihilism, which, combined with the media overdominance of the radical right, gained stability and did not meet the due public and legal resistance. And who lied to us that constitutionalism and democracy would be achieved without a struggle?
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