A bloody address was distributed by the IPO “Socialism 21st Century” to the delegates of the 50th Congress of the BSP. It demands the immediate replacement of the chairman, Cornelia Ninova, and the election of a temporary leadership. As arguments, the authors pointed to “disastrous” results of the party in the elections and loss of electorate among all strata.
We remind you that the members of “Socialism 21st Century” are Georgi Pirinski, his daughter Ana Pirinska, Yuriy Aslanov, Valery Zhablyanov, Georgi Bozhinov, Emil Behar, Velislava Dureva.
Here is the unedited letter:
“Comrades, the Delegates of the 50th Congress have no right to close their eyes to the truth – the Bulgarian Socialist Party is stuck in the periphery of the country’s socio-political life!
The political crisis is so deep that it has opened space for radical ideas to change the form of government – to abandon the parliamentary republic and even to dismantle the multi-party nature of the democratic process. Against this background, the agenda of the Congress proposed by the National Council of the BSP completely diverges from the agenda of society and remains outside the main challenges facing Bulgaria today.
But we, the delegates, are obliged to realize the truth about the state of the party:
– BSP is shrinking in terms of membership and assets;
– The BSP is losing voters in all social groups, in which until recently it was a leading force – among working people, among the intelligentsia, in the villages, among the Bulgarian officers, and even among Bulgarian pensioners;
– BSP has a catastrophically low percentage of voters among young people, it is getting old, and no new forces are pouring into it;
– BSP is depersonalized in the local government – it loses municipal councilors, the leadership opposes its own mayors and even excludes the most successful ones;
– Our ideology is in crisis – in the BSP there has been no ideological debate for a long time, and the political content has been replaced by PR. The BSP uses left-wing phraseology, but with its actions it fails to prove that it leads a left-wing policy. With the discrepancy between words and deeds, the leadership has exhausted the moral creed of the BSP. The most striking example is the contradiction between the declarations of dismantling the “GERB model” and the actions by which the leadership legitimizes its bearers.
This duplicity frustrated hundreds of thousands of voters and even alienated a significant part of the party’s core. The main question before the Congress now is how the BSP can return as a leading party capable of countering the destructive trends in society.
This is only possible if the BSP once again wins the trust and support of everyone who fights for Bulgaria as a welfare state in which equality, supremacy of public interest and solidarity between people are in power. It will not be easy and it cannot be done before the upcoming elections. But it must be started immediately, because the party could not defend its participation in the management of the country – the thesis was permanently imposed on the BSP that every participation in power ends with a crisis and a severe loss of trust.
Fundamental for the BSP is the question on whose behalf and for whose benefit it makes policy and governs, as well as whether its actions contribute to society and the state or only to an empowered circle around the leadership, increasingly distant from people’s problems. Any opinion different from that of the leadership is suppressed and punished; the atmosphere of camaraderie, frankness and criticality is grossly violated; the Statute is drastically violated in order to forcefully impose decisions made unilaterally and in the interest of narrow and obscure circles.
Subjectivity and distorted criteria were imposed in personnel policy, in which the leading principle is personal devotion, not professionalism and business qualities. Individuals with a right-wing identity, with bright and memorable anti-socialist appearances turned out to be in high positions. Not “reformed” – the BSP was transformed into something foreign and distant from the Bulgarian socialist tradition, from the ideal of a holy and pure republic.
A party with a long history, indisputable merits in the anti-fascist struggle, enormous experience and contribution to the industrialization of the country is about to become a historical memory. Comrades, Change cannot begin if responsibility for the state of the party is transferred to party members and grassroots organizations, as is clearly the intention of the proposed Congress agenda.
The change must begin by changing the leadership, as a guarantee of forming a new image and turning over the way the BSP understands and does its politics. The Congress of the BSP is called as the highest body to reflect the hopes of the party! Therefore, we call on the delegates of the 50th Congress to adopt another agenda subordinate to the immediate resolution of both the intra-party and deep political crisis in the country!
We strongly suggest that the Congress session take the following decisions:
1. Immediately restore the mandate of the delegates to the 50th Congress unconstitutionally terminated by the National Council, municipal councils and conferences in recent months.
2. Terminates the mandate of the chairman of the BSP and elects a temporary leadership until a new election is held.
3. Assigns the National Council to prepare a framework platform of the BSP for the upcoming elections and for the party’s coalition policy.
4. Assigns the National Council to adopt guidelines for ideological and organizational renewal of the party, according to which to prepare the next session of the Congress.
