Comment by Ivaylo Noyzi Tsvetkov:
"Talk right, act left": If we translate it into English, we will get an ambiguity - "talk right, act left" or "talk right". And the second one works. And why do I think this is a fundamental problem of Bulgarian politics, especially in the last 4 years, after the poorly managed pandemic and the funny vicissitudes of seven consecutive elections?
Giving everywhere has never led to anything good
The answer, almost like the late giant Terry Pratchett, will take me a few years, and I know you have a few minutes. Think about it: The official narrative of almost everyone, including the newest Euro-Atlantics, is subject to mantras such as "more investments" (especially foreign ones - "come here, foreign business people"), "more jobs" (it is not clear who will create them? Someone from the BSP or another philanthropist?), "facilitating small and medium-sized businesses" (perceived as "good", not the bad oligarch comrades there). The right-wing tax system with the flat tax is always mentioned, but no one mentions how there are 400 relatively honest ways for the oligarch comrades to suck money from the local store. The mythologies of "deregulation", "decentralization", "optimization of the state apparatus", etc., collide with reality.
While they talk to the right and the media slowly caress business in its erogenous zones, Bulgarian politicians are actually following the maxim "plumb the state feeder hard, led by the repressive apparatus". And there have been no innocent finance ministers here lately. They have all conveniently forgotten (or did not know) that the first word of every truly right-wing finance minister, even if you push him in his sleep, is "no". Apparently we urgently need someone like Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson or Reagan's right-hand man - the late Donald Reagan, who is truly right-wing, to say that state handouts have never led to anything good.
Everyone consumes a populist "left"
There is a very simple explanation - "you teach them badly", as my great-grandfather, the Tsar's cavalry officer, used to say, "and they want more ready-made". And this populist system of handouts, which is often defined as "left" under the pretext that the state helps - leads to the sad conclusions of how millions in Europe, and partly in our country as well, are hanging on to "social". Of course, the spirit of the political times in our country has made social benefits plus relatively cheaply bought votes an integral part of political practice, while otherwise we are "concerned" about business and jobs in the media. And against the backdrop of this indiscriminate state handout in the last decade in our country, the ostracized Cornelia Ninova screamed that "the entire left has gone down the drain". No, my beautiful one, only the ridiculous talk of your fading "left coalition" has gone down the drain, and your hateful, supposedly enemies - led by GERB and PP - are actually "consuming" this left that you are talking about.
There is also a socio-cultural aspect here, not only economic. It includes talking passionately about "Bulgarianness" - but not enlightened patriotism, but the mass instillation in people's heads of a kind of nationalistic pseudo-moral compass, according to which we are the greatest and oldest European nation and have practically created life on Earth. Only after us come the grandfathers of modern Macedonians, the Mesopotamian civilization, Gilgamesh, the Hellenes, etc. Here I can be ironic to infinity, but I don't find it funny, because this nonsense could be traced to this day - to the latest new, called the left.
Attempt to guarantee the votes of entire strata
Why is this happening? Because if you plant de facto unearned state money on certain strata, you are supposedly guaranteeing the votes of the guild and their families. And because you know that sooner or later this political impasse of ours will fall apart by itself. And if you serve people below and around the poverty line one-time small gifts, they might also vote, who knows?
Of course, all of this is already subordinated to a cognitively pathetic impulse - to attack truly right-wing liberal democracy in every way, to crush it culturally, because its DNA also includes meritocracy, i.e. the opportunity for the best and most enterprising to push themselves forward without being hindered. Here I will immediately add an important clarification - let us help all those who have fallen into an acceptable impossibility through the state, but not those healthy and upright on "social" who live on the back of our populist left-wing state. As if that "unwashed Russia" of Lermontov.
"The dogs bark, the caravan stands still"
Our politicians do talk about right-wing things, but - as if they were Zhivkov's heirs - they act in the style of "a little bit for everyone, so that they don't scream".
I am sure of one thing: we will not become Poland this way, and in fact - we will not become anything. We will not even take small steps on the path of a welfare state like Romania. Or we will introduce rudimentary rules like post-war Austria, which really helps business, but works to reduce poverty through careful and relatively smart measures, and not by stuffing their mouths with small state handouts. Until the next elections.
In conclusion, if you will allow: One of the fundamental problems here is that our government and general political understanding neither helps business on the right, nor gives enough to the table on the left.
Therefore - let's laugh together with our oligarch/politician comrades. Thanks to which we can remake the proverb: "The dogs (like me here) bark, the caravan stands still."