/ world today news/ Municipalities should not be seen as businesses – they are first and foremost communities of people whose well-being should be the basis of their management. Decentralization and the redistribution of part of the taxes to the municipalities are left-wing policies that are key to their prosperity. The participants in the panel “Local elections ’23 – the solution lies in progressive leftist policies”, part of the Forum for progressive leftist solutions, organized by the Delegation of Bulgarian Socialists in the EP, united around these ideas.
Successful left-wing mayors and municipal councilors took part in the discussion – Donka Mihailova, mayor of Troyan, Vladimir Georgiev, mayor of Samokov, Ivan Takov – deputy chairman of the Committee on Finance and Budget in SOS, Nishan Jingozyan – member of the London Mayor’s team , Nikolay Gachev – municipal councilor in Rhodope, as well as political scientist Strahil Deliyski and Katerina Klinkova – teacher of Bulgarian language and literature.
“The left is a democracy, but it must first exist at the local level. Unfortunately, business interests in many municipalities stop the development of local democracy. But it is a real cause, there is real politics, there is solidarity in the highest form”, Assoc. Ph.D. Ginka Chavdarova, former executive director of the National Movement of Municipalities in Bulgaria, opened the panel.
“Local communities are the real political laboratory. And what happens on the ground of our daily lives determines what happens higher up in the structures of society, of the state, of the continent. The importance of how we think in our community, how local politics thinks, should not be questioned. But, unfortunately, we lack this type of reflection and understanding,” he said Strahil Deliyski, political scientist and teacher in SU “St. Clement of Ohrid”. He also added that progressive leftist politics cannot happen “without support from below, from the people.”
“I think the left should definitely get behind the idea of decentralization. The humiliation suffered by the Bulgarian municipalities and mayors is enormous. How can we guarantee good services for citizens with only 30% of our own revenues going to the municipal budget? People ask us what we do and what we have done for them, not what we will do in a year. We, the mayors, want simple things – only 2% of the personal income tax should go into the municipal budget, and only 1% of the corporate tax. Thus, BGN 1.2 billion will enter the municipal budget,” said Donka Mihailova, mayor of Troyan – a municipality that manages all its utilities independently and is the second largest employer at the local level.
The mayor of Samokov, Vladimir Georgiev, supported the idea of more revenue in the local budget. “The state transfers more than 700 obligations to the municipalities without providing the mayors with a budget, and since we don’t have enough funds, we become innovators. Strong municipalities are those that fully manage communal activities. Positive changes cannot happen if the municipalities cannot be investors and the state continues to bleed them dry,” Vladimir Georgiev believes. Some of the successful practices in Samokov municipality are financing the training of nurses to stay and work in the local hospital, the creation of a municipal sports enterprise that pays the salaries of 20 coaches in various sports clubs, the opportunity for every child to ski for free.
A left-wing alternative for the management and development of the Metropolitan Municipality was proposed Ivan Takov, who is the chairman of the BSP – Sofia and the group of socialists in the Sofia Municipal Council. “We politically protect the interests of workers, small entrepreneurs, the socially rejected and all losers from the hypermarket society and state. We are calm about the interests of big capital – there is someone to represent and protect them. The issue of representation – both nationally and municipally – is key for the left. Representation, but not of sponsors, but of significant social groups. Representation is different from power brokering. It means defending certain values, working in the field, connecting with people, listening and hearing everything they say. If we manage to deal with all this, the good results for the left will inevitably come,” said Ivan Takov.
The municipal councilor from the municipality of Rodopi Nikolay Gachev drew attention to the role of young people in the implementation of left-wing policies at the local level. He emphasized the need for the Bulgarian left to become attractive to them with the messages and ideas it offers. “The future of Bulgaria lies in the youth. To deal with the demographic crisis, we need to keep them here,” he said.
Katerina Klinkova, teacher of Bulgarian language and literature, raised the question of the cost of education. “The neoliberalization of education, or more precisely its smooth and rather threatening transition to the private sector, is an extremely scary trend. Education seems to become a luxury and privilege only for the rich and continues to generate great inequalities. At the same time, municipalities continue to lease public buildings to private schools, and private schools operate in community centers. We should not turn education into a business, it should start with the welfare of the children and end with the question of what kind of society we ultimately want to live in.”
Nishan Jingozian, member of the Mayor of London’s team, presented a number of innovative practices for supporting citizens from local authorities in Great Britain: “Our guiding principle is integration and overcoming differences, not deepening inequalities. The presence of institutions that deal with the problems of priority communities helps to overcome structural barriers. Citizens in Great Britain are protected by law on nine grounds (age, pregnancy and maternity, presence of disabilities, religion, race, etc.) and falling within them cannot be the subject of discrimination. That the state invests in different groups shows how seriously it takes the protection of human rights.”
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