Their scandals shine a light on well-kept secrets, but nothing follows from it. In order to understand their true intentions before the elections, we need to see not who the politicians are talking against, but who they are silent about, writes Georgi Lozanov.
Another election is approaching, which naturally sharpens our hearing for political talk. One continues to hear the politicians themselves who are tired of bickering among themselves. Their scandals shed light on well-kept secrets, but nothing comes of it, because even the children already know that they blame each other - not to get themselves into prison, but to get into parliament. Therefore, far more indicative of their true intentions is not against whom they speak, but about whom they prefer to remain silent.
Deafening silence
GERB is silent about Peevski with his “New beginning” and for ITN, which suggests that the hypothesis of their joint management is not groundless. He has been silent recently about “Revival“ and the president, which raises the suspicion that he can “give a shoulder” of a pro-Putin majority in our country, as a pilot test was done with Putin's law on the non-existent propaganda of non-traditional sexual orientation in school. Boyko Borisov is clearly no longer fighting battles and called on all leaders to bury their tomahawks, thereby tacitly recognizing him as their political leader. It is not excluded, because experience has shown that his “natural enemy” it's not in the parliament, it's the street, which is currently a “dead end”.
Paradoxically, ITN is also trying its hand at a similar dominant role, and they had seriously begun to negotiate for their own government. They seem to think that “people" is a magic word and as soon as you put it in your name, you automatically become the voice of the sovereign.
The president is most deafeningly silent, of course, about “Revival”, and they - about him, waiting for a permanent pro-Putin majority to finally be formed, which will drive away the “genders” and the “foreign agents”, to confront the “embassy servants” before the People's Court, to stop aid to Ukraine, to leave NATO and what other post-Soviet dreams Kostadinov has. If it still doesn't work out, the president will be forced to create a party for peace and friendship on his own, with whom it goes without saying.
Peevski is silent about GERB, albeit with gritted teeth (even after the withdrawal of their support from Kalin Stoyanov), but without losing hope that, as Borisov had said, “it will be what it was”. Dogan's DPS is silent about everyone except Peevski according to the logic of the passions in Blaga Dimitrova's poem:
„We were the closest… That's why from now on
We will be the most foreign people in the world“.
No one is silent about PP-DB
PP-DB try to keep silent about GERB (they just can never say never to a meeting with them) and about BSP. By the way, with the BSP, everyone saw a miracle, because in their internal party chatter it is increasingly difficult to understand who is fighting for what beyond the redistribution of posts.
One thing is certain: no one is silent about PP-DB. They are attacked with varying intensity by everyone. The reason is that, because of their background and their conflict with the president over the war in Ukraine, they have become, even if they don't always want to, the domestic political representatives of the Euro-Atlantic battle with Putinism in geopolitical terms. Thus, the attacks against them are naturally transferred to Euro-Atlanticism as well - whether for the purpose of denying it or using it. To the point of becoming an insulting word or at the very least a meaningless cliché. So let's recall its contents.
Who is failing Euro-Atlanticism?
The basis of Euro-Atlanticism, also popularly known as transatlanticism, is the “Marshall“ plan, implemented from 1948 to 1952. It envisages the US providing a substantial grant to Europe to rebuild the economy and turn it into a barrier to the spread of the second great totalitarianism of the 20th century – communism, after the victory over the first – fascism. Thus, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, in a spirit of solidarity and in opposition to dictatorships, liberal democracy was established with its inherent rule of law, respect for human rights and dignified material existence of its citizens. Euro-Atlanticism is not an abstraction, but a reality that our children can see and touch when they go to study or work there. And when they return, as at the protests in 2020, with demands that Bulgaria finally become a full part of it.
Euro-Atlanticism entered the political vocabulary in place of the previously widely used term “democracy“ after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, because calm talk about democracy was no longer enough. The question arose again of how, with Euro-Atlantic solidarity, it could become a barrier to the dictatorship revived in Moscow and on the offensive.
Putin's propaganda, like the Soviet propaganda at the time, recognized Euro-Atlanticism as its main enemy. But he does not lead the fight with him as before by emphasizing some unique merits of his own, but by psychologically discrediting the enemy. It is not carried out in the public sphere, where rational arguments are valid, but mainly in the private, in its most delicate zone - the sexual, where personal experiences are valid and aggression is easily generated. It is enough for someone to call someone a “gender” and without looking for any more reasons to go on the offensive. By the same psychological mechanism, you shout at the driver who annoyed you with something, “faggot", although it may be pó a man of yours. Or, to be sure, you just swear at his mother. Russian propaganda and its local repeaters are trying to organize a collective cursing of the collective West.
The triangle in the political coordinate system
In Bulgaria, Euro-Atlanticism, knowingly or not, was further discredited by Delyan Peevski, who took shelter in his political niche in order to keep his enviable invisible power from there and to be able to accuse anyone who dared to encroach on it of encroaching on the pro-Western our orientation. And when precisely the defender of Euro-Atlanticism is sanctioned by our Euro-Atlantic partners for corruption, it begins to seem that Euro-Atlanticism and corruption are not incompatible. And the voter faces an unsolvable equation: which is the lesser evil – corruption or Putinism.
Thus, the coordinate system of our political space was completely bent and a triangle was formed with two-sided oppositions on all three sides. At its peak is the president with the firm support of “Revival” (or vice versa), on the other side is Peevski with the hesitant support of GERB, and on the third side are the PP-DB, who have undertaken to unite the fight against corruption and Putinism, but something is still lame in their verbal and behavioral rhetoric in which to do. And it is unlikely that the upcoming elections will be able to offer a new geometry of the political space.