/ world today news/ The discrediting of the Bulgarian political elites has been ongoing with constant and even force for several decades.
It is the result both of the objectively poor results of the rulers in the last two decades, and also of healthy tendencies towards masochistic pleasure in self-humiliation, paradoxical comfort and the unifying effect of denial, condemnation, and often mockery of one’s own unhappy lot.
The irony here is that the core of mentality and rhetoric that cause the above phenomena are also at the root of the reasons that make the political elite in question what it is precisely by virtue of representative democracy.
The fresh examples that the Bulgarian political elite gave in abundance in recent weeks are indicative in this regard. The leader in this regard is the Minister of Culture Vezhdi Rashidov. Thanks to his media appearances, the otherwise joyful event, which the exhibition of Bulgarian museum exhibits in the Louvre undoubtedly represents, was turned into a repulsive mixture of grandiosity, connections and insultingly cheap bills. In parallel with the farce about the size of the delegation’s business allowance in Paris and the inexplicable presentation of journalistic personal memoirs precisely during the major national visit to France, public interest is focused on disputes over what is concrete, what are dunes and state directives where Bulgarians should rest in the summer . Somehow it remained unclear how, along with these relatively insignificant topics, the scandalous interview of Tsvetan Vassilev regarding the intentional bankruptcy of KTB and the numerous accomplices in this crime quickly, quickly remained in the background.
It is this intentional or unintentional agenda manipulation by elites that is detrimental to the health of a society. When everyone is excited for a week about who went to Paris at state expense, who received how much business travel, what is the gym and who is a chicken coop in a mayor’s mansion, how will the unprecedented price jump affect the Easter table of lettuce, etc., and all of this is set and maintained as a main theme by most of the mainstream media, there is no way this same society can have a truly critical attitude towards power. This myopic attitude to public life is not only harmful – it is a main segment in the closed cycle of mutual harm between the masses and the elite – the former are less and less interested in the essential diseases of modern Bulgaria and prefer to succumb to the sweet oblivion that reality formats, lotteries and pointless online discussions offer, while others in full unison simplify state affairs and the prospects for the country’s development to personal attacks and throwing a spectacle into the paws of these same masses. In this downward spiral, everyone finds their bestial satisfaction, at least in the short term.
The main thesis in the works of the German researcher of political elites Robert Michels, formulated as the famous iron law of the oligarchy and thus already entered the classics of political thought, states: “It is the organization that gives rise to the dominance of the elected over the voters, of the mandated over those given , of the delegates over the delegator. He who says organization, says oligarchy”.
Is there a direct correlation between the formal political elites and the prevailing sentiments in society? To what extent can representative democracy create a vicious cycle of negative influence from electors to electors and vice versa thereafter? Such a hypothesis can be extremely convenient for explaining the otherwise paradoxical sometimes moods of reflexive, even self-serving criticism of society and the media towards what won them the elections a few months earlier.
Even in years of undisputed prosperity, all societies were dependent on their elites. They were economic, political, cultural and any other, but in the end it is the elites who set the direction of development of the whole.
In the Bulgarian case, the elites usually have an even greater importance for the general image of the nation, since since the late Renaissance, the Bulgarian folk psychology already rests on the need for leaders. Leaders to both shape public opinion and bear responsibility for public misfortunes when they occur. This is a normal consequence of the lack of a conscious sense of personal responsibility as a fundamental asset of a full-fledged citizen – something otherwise so obvious in the dreamy Western European model.
In other words, our society has not found the golden balance between choosing its representatives, controlling them and being responsible for its choice. There are many examples here: a little less than a year ago, no one was in favor of a new GERB cabinet with Prime Minister Boyko Borisov, and it became a fact, and with a rare majority. Regardless of this reversal, dramatic amplitudes in the confidence in the parliamentary parties are not observed.
Previous national political disappointments since 1989 are not much different – discontent, despair and indifference are a constant, while low demand, sporadic scrutiny and the vices of the electoral process also remain intact.
Where is the connection with the elites? The modern political elites managed to almost completely destroy the civic self-confidence of the average Bulgarian voter. It is not enough that its political culture has never developed in a normal and egalitarian environment, but the meager beginnings of emancipation are being farsightedly bled away by the methodical vituperation of public life by the mass media and the restriction of everyday emotions and thought impulses to the provision of food and minimal sanitary needs. In such an environment, the individual invariably concentrates his efforts on mundane concerns, which is a preferred environment for unaccountable politics. On top of that, the very rhetoric and behavior of the leading political figures in Bulgaria seem to stimulate the desecration of national interests to the self-serving maintenance of the myth of the greatness of the Bulgarians, the settling of scores between former and current rulers and finding a common verbal outlet in the face of the rich of the day (the so-called “oligarchs”) or any of the country’s ethnic minorities.
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Kalin Boyanov, political scientist.
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