/View.info/ The collective beginning remains an irreplaceable basis for establishing the party as a leading political force in modern society
The leadership party, i.e. the leader, is built around the leader’s personality – both as a sole way of making decisions (regardless of possible assurances to the contrary), and as a personified activity in society. As a rule, power in such parties is exercised through the apparatus.
Conversely, a party that is capable of having a leading role in shaping the agenda and views in society is distinguished by a highly motivating internal party life that generates offensive politics and radiates the team of individuals capable of defending it and gaining public trust. Power in this type of party is exercised not simply by statute, but in practice by its leading political bodies.
An eloquent feature of the qualitative difference between the two types of parties is also the attitude of a given leadership to the period preceding the rise of a given leader. The first type of party distances itself from the past and its bearers in one form or another (including the extreme known from the “practices” of the 1930s), while the party capable of leading is characterized by the ability
to build shared assessments of the journey,
as a mandatory prerequisite for real cooperation and a convincing presentation to the public.
The public statements of the deputy chairman of the BSP Kiril Dobrev on December 16 of last year are an open justification of precisely the first type of attitude towards the past – the statement that the destructive model of the transition was laid already with the adoption of the Constitution and subsequent laws and decisions by the then representatives of the party to which today’s generation of leaders is a victim. An understanding that is clearly not his sole opinion at all, considering the statements about the “political class” and its actions.
Today, the BSP is in opposition after parliamentary elections, in which it managed to double its electoral support and its parliamentary representation – a “golden time” not only for intense parliamentary activity, but above all for a comprehensive review of the party’s condition to become the bearer of a plan for dignified development of Bulgaria, based on a sober assessment of both the achievements and the failures so far, as well as the real resources for the project – a negation of the oligarchic dictates of one-man power. It is this task, which the times impose, that obliges us to break with the “dismissal” of the discussion questions about how the party and its leadership actually function.
As the first step of such a comprehensive process, we should recall not just the title of the party’s Program: “BSP for Bulgaria – free citizens, a just state, a solidary society”, but above all the specific statements contained in it. Now, in the tenth year since its adoption in November 2008, does it give the necessary answers to the party and the country?
In an attempt to answer these questions, it is worth recalling as a start
the following productions from the Program:
– On the transition and on the responsibility of the party – the balance sheet of the transition is that the result is capitalism in its most ugly forms; The BSP bears a huge responsibility for not being able to stand up and realize the social model of the transition regardless of the fact that it twice won an absolute parliamentary majority; the main reason for this passivity and lack of determination was the lack of internal unity in the party itself, the actual disagreement on the key issues of the necessary changes;
– On modern globalization – in the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels revealed the sweeping power of the globalizing capitalist system; alternative solutions in modern conditions should lead to a reorientation of the economy towards the priorities of human development, of a democratic society, in accordance with clearly formulated social and environmental imperatives;
– About socialism – BSP is a party of democratic socialism, BSP conducts a consistent policy for social democracy for the development of an active welfare state as a way to realize the fundamental values of democratic socialism; in the modern Bulgarian conditions, we consider the Constitution as the basis on which we can and should build our policy in the next fifteen-twenty years.
In fact, the deadline specified in the Program offers an opportunity to implement in the course of this year
“mid-term review” of its validity
through an engaged all-party discussion. The result of such a discussion could be a program declaration, updating or amending one or other program positions, to be adopted by the Party Congress.
We must start with the Program for three reasons. The first – because the decision by which it was adopted at the 47th Congress from November 2008, for wide familiarization with it, remained unfulfilled; instead, a pamphlet by the then party chairman Sergey Stanishev with reflections on why we are socialists was distributed at the very meeting of the congress without any prior information and discussion. The second – because today many in the left space teach us that, in fact, the entry of the modern world into a new era makes all previous ideas about society and the processes taking place in it hopelessly outdated. The third – because we are faced with the challenge, instead of announcing the end of everything known today and turning to the Almighty for forgiveness and understanding, to work out and propose an ideologically based policy with which we can win new trust and support in society here and now and to refute judgments such as “there is no alternative”.
Along with the programmatic discussion, the daily practical work in the party itself and in society is no less important. At least three issues deserve special attention at the upcoming first plenary meeting of the National Party Council of the year. The first – the upcoming submission of the motion for a vote of no confidence in the government – both the reasons for the motion on the subject of corruption and relations with the DPS, having declared support for the vote, but with different justifications. As I stated at the last session of the 49th Congress on October 28th of this year, corruption today is a consciously managed system of remarkably well-functioning sophisticated networks, some highly structured, others quite decentralized, but all dedicated to one thing – self-enrichment. The second – the discussion of the draft Code of Ethics, which should meet one defining requirement – to become a real barrier against the influence of business interests and parallel structures in terms of political decisions and the practical activity of the party. The third –
the absence not only of political positions
but also on consistent practical actions of the National Council, the Parliamentary Group and the party’s local structures on the hot topics of the day – the intentions regarding Pirin Park and Bansko; the privatization, concessions and resales for profitable banks and businesses, such as UBB, Sofia Airport and Rila Hotel; the actions and inactions of the human rights authorities regarding allegations and reports of illegal enrichment, of large-scale cigarette smuggling, etc.
Without forgetting item 11 of section VII of the resolutions adopted by the National Assembly of the BSP on November 18 of this year. “Measures and urgent tasks to improve the organizational condition and expand the political influence of the BSP”, namely: “The IB of the NA of the BSP to submit to a meeting of the National Council information on the implementation of the decision of the NA of the BSP of June 20, 2013 on the situation in the country and the tasks of the party” (regarding the consequences of the disastrous nomination of Delyan Peevski for the head of DANS) with a deadline of January 2018 and submitted by Kornelia Ninova.
In doing so, we are permeated by the consciousness that the collective beginning remains irreplaceable as a basis for the establishment of the BSP as a leading political force in modern society. A basis without which we cannot count on success in the future elections, which we should approach not at all as a “game” with a series of “matches” in which we “beat” or on the contrary, but as a decisive clash of qualitatively different views on the further path of Bulgaria in the new times.
#BSP #leading #leading
