/ world today news/ “The sober draft budget made the parties run away like cockroaches at a lighted lamp”, the MEP believes
Sofia, April 30, 2023 – “I have no information when the president will hand over a mandate to form a government, he is empowered to decide. I don’t think there will be much of a rush, as in that case the election will fall before the summer holidays and the already unenthusiastic voters will not go to the polls. It will probably wait.
Either way, the president is guilty, regardless of what he does – he was criticized before for delaying the delivery of mandates, now – for rushing it. Realistically the parties are unable to unite around the country’s priorities, to overcome internal party logicwhich is another argument for what I have been repeating for months – that constitutional reform is necessary and that within the framework of the current Constitution, a sustainable, strategically thinking majority cannot be born to reform the country.”
Ivo Hristov, a member of the Group of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats in the EP (S&D) and head of the office of President Rumen Radev in the period 2017-2019, said this on the air of Euronews Bulgaria television.
In his words, status quo and change need to be redefined.
“Until recently, the status quo was associated with the parties of the corruption model. As such, GERB and DPS were branded. Other right-wing parties claimed to be the bearers of the change – “Democratic Bulgaria”, the loudest of all, and “We continue the change”, which even has it in its name. At the moment, the status quo unites all those parties, in fact – more or less all parties, clinging to the exhausted constitutional model, which cannot give birth to anything else but preserves their partocratic privileges. All the commentators are here, and a huge part of the media, and quite a few citizens who are instilled with fear of possible change,” said the MEP.
On the air of Euronews Bulgaria, Ivo Hristov explained that he associates the change with all those people who realize that the present Constitution can give birth to nothing but ugly compromises.
“We’re seeing it in the talks right now, too. People on the right, who had the naivete to believe that their parties were agents of change, see them enter into a dialogue with GERB, against whom people protested in the squares. This is the second time this has happened. They already gave the ball back to GERB once after the crisis of 2013. I don’t know how many times this play has to be played for everyone to realize that this system is exhausted and the politicians who claim to be the agents of change are de facto concrete the status quo,” said Hristov, and specified that the president did not open the topic of constitutional reform:
“Behind the idea stands the one who declared that he supports it. In this sense, at the moment we are quite alone those who plead for a quick constitutional change. So far, the president has not reacted.”
“Whether President Rumen Radev has the right to run for a third term in the event of a possible change to the Constitution – that is for the legislator to decide. In any case, when the Constitution is changed, new elections are held. Those who think that the Constitution is made for the sake of the president, have not understood the meaning of the conversation at all,” Ivo Hristov is emphatic.
The MEP expressed the opinion that the country is stuck in an ungovernable phase:
“It needs strategic long-termism to be able to carry out sustainable policies, to evolve in a certain direction. We are currently dealing with the arguments between Manol Peykov and Kostadin Kostadinov in the National Assembly, you know at what level. You don’t expect such a parliament to give birth to anything substantial, do you? A 30-year-old person with no significant legislative experience (Stoyu Stoev, commented as a possible chairman of the parliamentary legal committee) has been named as the leading figure of the judicial reform.
Ivo Hristov expressed the opinion that a presidential republic is much more stable than a parliamentary one:
“France, for example, has been rocked by civil protests for years. It started with the “yellow vests” years ago, now the protests have escalated. But France is a governable country, regardless of the fact that the president has completely lost the confidence of his fellow citizens and does not even dare to appear in the neighborhoods and regardless of the crisis.”
According to Hristov, the National Assembly cannot open the topic of constitutional reform at all, and at the stage we are in, we have to choose whether to undertake such a reform or not. According to the MEP, talks about constitutional change in the direction of judicial reform are frivolous. He described them as “another election banner.
“There is no idea how to reform the system, only an ambition to control the judiciary by another lobby. The demands of Europe have been there for a long time, but there is nothing constructive in this direction. I don’t think this is the main reason why we are not part of Schengen, although it is the most visible and the most often advertised. A real reason is the Dutch interest in the port of Rotterdam being the main entry point for goods in Europe. If the southern route is opened, serious trade will also begin from there.”
According to Hristov, it makes an impression that the more Europe postpones Schengen, the more it accelerates us on the road to the Eurozone:
“It should make people think. We are told, “The door is open, fulfill, welcome.” American factors also say it is time. I have concerns about the future of the euro, concerns shared by many economists in Western Europe. The euro is not at its best. The Ukrainian crisis is also draining the strength of the euro and there is an unclear future development. That is why some wise countries are not in a hurry to cross this threshold. If ten years ago the euro seemed a completely natural and unalternative choice for Bulgaria, today I have reservations not so much because of Bulgaria, which is preparing on this path, but because of the future of the common currency itself. They often put forward the argument with the inevitable increase in the price of some goods after the adoption of the euro, but this is not the most serious counter-argument to joining the eurozone. I think the future of the common European currency is not at all clear.’
“The budget proposed by the service cabinet scared the parties. One said: “Europe is our priority, the euro at any cost.” The others said, “We don’t give enough to the poor, we should give more.” Populism on both sides is now being put to the test with the budget. Either you say that you agree with a bigger deficit and that the Bulgarians should receive the corresponding social payments in order to survive the crisis, or you say: “We are tightening our belts, we are abandoning you, Europe is our horizon.” Both are in confusion and were grounded by the sober draft budget, which made the parties run away like cockroaches at a lighted lamp,” Hristov also said.
According to him, there is no talk of warming the relations between Rumen Radev and Boyko Borisov.
“The lines sent by Borisov to the president (“If the dictators in the world are like me and you, we are great, God grant, to everyone”), are part of the acting talent of the former prime minister. He is able to pull out the true sentence at any moment, to be effective. It’s just that relations cannot be as conflictual as they were at the time when the incumbent prime minister was strangling the incumbent president with all the tools of the executive branch. Now Borisov is simply not in power,” the MEP believes.
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