/ world today news/ Tanya JOEVA’s interview about Lord Byron, the Greeks and the European periphery with Ivo Hristov, Associate Professor and Doctor of Sociology.
– Assoc. Hristov, after dramatic negotiations the “Greece” outcome came, as long as the country remains in the Eurozone, the banks opened. But drastic austerity measures were imposed. Did Greece win or lose from this outcome?
– SYRIZA did not come to power with a promise that Greece will not pay its debts, but that it will conduct negotiations to stop the draining of the country’s financial and economic blood in the form of new and new debts, which in a closed magical circle are constantly increasing. Debt renegotiation means two things. First, that this debt cannot be paid. Therefore, it can be reduced and rescheduled. Second, to achieve interest and financial terms that make it repayable. The debt loop around Greece is constructed so that the country looks like a drug addict. To avoid default, the country has to get new and new loans, where its economy is increasingly drained. The proposals of the IMF and especially of the so-called Eurogroup – an odious, obscure and illegal organization, as Varoufakis called it, because it is not regulated in the European Act – lead to one thing: Greece will not be able to pay its debts and the country will be dismembered. Ports, basic structures will be taken, the possibility of Greek economic expansion in the Balkans, which was possible in the 1990s and 2000, will be eliminated. The country will be sold off to creditors.
– You draw too pessimistic a version for the Greeks.
– Therefore – faithful. Tsipras was given an ultimatum and he had two options: to agree to the proposals, which he did, and to let the things I talked about happen. Second option: to refuse Greece to leave the Eurozone. From financial and economic, the problem would become geopolitical. The question was, if Greece were to leave the Eurozone, who would it turn to – Russia and China, the US or another world power.
– Confessions of foreign tourists that they visit Greece out of solidarity and that they will do so again are impressive. The world seems to stand in solidarity with the Greeks. What does that tell you?
– He tells me that Lord Byron went to fight for an imaginary Greece (in 1823-1824 George Byron fought for the Greek Independence Movement and was revered as a national hero in Greece – NB), and no Lord he did not come to fight for Bulgarian liberation. This has not been, and will not be. In the eyes of the Western world, Greece has a symbolic and civilizational meaning. Greek society is well developed, much better than Bulgarian society. It was the exact opposite 25 years ago. Our economy was twice the size of Greece’s, while now, even at this moment, Greece’s is five times the size of ours. Bulgaria ceased to be an industrial and technological country, its literate and competent population left the country. There is another thing – Greek tourism is light years ahead of what is called Bulgarian tourism.
– It became mercilessly clear that we, Bulgarians, live worse than citizens of a country that was on the verge of bankruptcy. Is there any lesson for us from the drama with Greece?
– Lesson from what? From the way Europe deals with peripheral countries that are in the imaginary zone of European brotherhood and unity, to paraphrase the old slogan? Or from the fact that for a while peripheral economies may live on borrowed time and be stocked, to use the street term? So that they can then be grabbed by the throat and squeezed. I don’t see that we have drawn any useful conclusions.
– Comments were heard that in this form – a rich North and a poor South, the European Union cannot exist for long.
– This model was embedded in the idea of the EU. And the Eurozone is structured so that it actually serves a single center of the EU, which is called Germany – the fourth export economy in the world and the first in Europe. This is at the expense of everyone else. At the expense of weaker economies, divided into several belts – underdeveloped south and east, medium-developed countries such as Austria, France, Poland and the core around Germany. What Germany is doing is economically logical, but on the bones of the entire European periphery.
– Will the new left gain momentum after the “Greece” case, or will it stagnate?
– The “Greece” case was as in the proverb “beat the saddle, let the donkey remember”. In the role of the donkey are Italy, Spain, the weak economies in Southern and Eastern Europe. It was clearly shown that no attempt at emancipation would be tolerated.
The European project is based on a basic contradiction that sooner or later will explode. As the sociologist Andrey Raichev says, one country cannot produce Mercedes, another tomato, and believe that there can be economic parity between them. One will be a servant, the other a master. This is the alphabet of economic science.
The consequences – Europe will become a geopolitical appendage of America and a loose economic confederation with a strong core around Germany, understand Austria, the Czech Republic, Benelux, Scandinavia.
– Voices were also heard in BSP that PES is preventing its change. To what extent does the European status quo hinder national policies and what is the role of national elites?
– It depends. If we talk about the national elite of Germany, the national interest of this country coincides with the elite interest of Germany, and it – with its leading position in Europe. When we speak of a dominant European interest, we must understand a dominant German interest, supporting the French as well, since France is increasingly relegated to a third-rate country compared to Germany.
As for national elites, you have a contradiction in definition. The moment they are brought into the European elite, they cease to be national. One option is to desperately struggle for a while, like Greece or the Czech Republic under Vaclav Klaus, or vice versa – to become part of the European bureaucracy in order to take advantage of the geopolitical situation. I think our elite do the latter. But not for the benefit of Bulgaria, but for their own benefit.
– This same elite, or part of it, turns Bulgaria into a bridgehead against Russia. What is the role of reformers in this process and how do you expect it to develop?
– It won’t develop. Obviously, Ukraine is moving towards a certain freezing of the conflict, which does not mean that it will be resolved.
In Bulgaria there are three groups related to the case. In one are the so-called reformers, for whom it is clear whose interests they serve. GERDs have a reasonable and wait-and-see attitude because they know what going too far in one direction or the other can lead to. In the third group is DPS, which shares the position of GERB. I am referring to the influential political forces. And since the “enormous” electoral power of some political forces, which are otherwise media-friendly, will be seen in the fall, there will be a clearing and shifting of the layers.
– You preempted the question of whether you expect changes in the ruling coalition after the local elections.
– I’m waiting. Geopolitical pressure is also important here. An electoral dwarf may be significant to the external factor and will stand in governance with someone else’s weight, not his own. But it is a fact that in none of the areas in which the Prime Minister planted the so-called duck egg reformers, they have not made an iota of progress. Besides, I didn’t expect anything else.
– Is that why you call them the so-called reformers?
– Of course.
– Can geopolitical influence intervene in next year’s presidential elections? It is no secret that Rosen Plevneliev has ambitions for a second term.
– It is more than certain that he will intervene. Not that the president has any function in Bulgarian political life, but he is still an important figure.
– At the same time, let’s recall that the current president is the only head of state of the transition, to whom disapproval permanently prevails over approval.
– That is why he made major geographical discoveries – that Crimea is Ukraine, and Ukraine is in Europe. Give him a chance!
– The chance may come with the referendum this fall. But unlike the Greek one, ours will be related more to technical issues.
– Greece is a country with a high political culture, with an active and vigilant civil population. To see such a thing in Bulgaria? We could compare with Greece 25 years ago. We are now a beleaguered country. We have ups and downs as well. Now is the time.
– As a sociologist, what do you expect from the referendum?
– I expect it to fail for technical reasons. It is structured on beautiful pacifiers such as majority elections or electronic voting. This is a technical distraction, sending the Bulgarian to chase Mihalya with popular lies.
– What lies do you mean?
– That by introducing majoritarian elections, we will send angels to the parliament. This shows the primitivism and infantilism in our public consciousness, which thinks that complex social problems are solved by a good person with superpowers.
It is also believed that electronic voting will eliminate BSP and DPS because nearly 2 million emigrants will not vote for them. But the Bulgarians in New York or elsewhere in the world did not run away to deal with Bulgaria. The referendum is a replacement of the fundamental problem – what is the Bulgarian political system, whose interests does it represent and can the dead status quo be changed with technical pacifiers.
– Can you?
– It can’t. The active event “referendum”, advertised as a means of fighting the status quo, aims at the opposite – to freeze the status quo. At the same time, the circle around Rosen Plevneliev imagines that the poll will pump up his electoral muscles. It will not pump them up.
#president #sends #chase #Mihalya
