Recently a Bulgarian daily "Trud" carried out something like a referendum on
the eventual NATO membership and the result was about 77% AGAINST.
Official persons shamelesly declare that they reject the idea about
referendum on that issue because they know that the answer will be "crystal
clear" NO.
The important thing is to ask Solomon Passi - who is even NOT a
Bulgarian! - and his likes but not the Bulgarian people re critical issues like
this one.
You have an example of "democracy - US style".
Date: Sun, 3 Nov 2002 08:38:21 -0800 (PST)
From: Rick Rozoff
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:
1941 / 2002: Bulgaria Joins Neue Welt Ordnung/New World
Order
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/307/nation/Bulgaria_prepares_move_to_a_new_camp+.shtml
Boston
Globe
November 3, 2002
Bulgaria prepares move to a new
camp
By Robert G. Kaiser, Washington Post,
11/3/2002
SOFIA,
Bulgaria - In August 1990, a member of the new
Bulgarian
parliament, Solomon Passy, proposed that
Bulgaria leave the Warsaw Pact,
the military alliance
of the Soviet Union and its sat! ellites, and join
the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
''The idea was absolutely scandalous,'' Passy said
recently. His
own party disowned him. The Communists
who ran the country dismissed his
suggestion.
Passy told this story in the office of the Bulgarian
foreign
minister - which he now happens to be. He
spoke with a smile, knowing that
next month, NATO will
invite Bulgaria into the alliance.
This fact, still astounding to Passy and to many other
Bulgarians, was
one reason for the smile. It
constitutes a happy tale for a country of 7.6
million
that is about to become a member of a reassuring club,
one that
promises to defend members' security.
Bulgaria's transformation from loyal Soviet satellite
to disastrously
unsuccessful democracy to prospective
member of NATO shows how quickly
history has moved.
Not that the invitation happened by chance. Passy
is
one of numerous Bulgarians who worked hard over many
years to qualify
the country for NATO membership.
Until last year there was no clear sign
that their
efforts were about to succeed.
Acting on the proposition that ''if you want to become
a member of NATO,
behave as if you are one,'' as Passy
put it, Bulgaria quickly offered the
United States
whatever help it could provide after the
terrorist
attacks. US tanker planes refueling aircraft for
the
Afghanistan campaign used a Bulgarian air force base
at Burgas on
the Black Sea for two months, a real
contribution to the war effort,
according to American
officials.
The Bush administration voiced gratitude. ''We that we
need as many
allies as we can get'' for the war on
terrorism, a senior US official said.
Bulgaria and its
larger neighbor to the north, Romania - which sent
a
battalion to Afghanistan - soon found themselves moved
from doubtful
to likely candidates for the next round
of NATO enlargement, which will be
formally announced
at a summit meeting on Nov. 21 and 22 in
Prague.
Bulgaria had been on the doubtful list because its
transition
from communism to democracy and free
markets had been painful and, for most
of the first
decade, unproductive.
As recently as early 1997, Bulgaria was on the verge
of economic
collapse; inflation in February of that
year was 243 percent. The gross
domestic product was
plummeting and Bulgarians were lining up to buy
bread.
A government elected that April put Bulgaria on a path
toward
stability. An independent currency board
controlled inflation. New
leadership began a radical
reduction in the size of the armed forces and
pushed
Soviet-era commanders into retirement.
Not that the country's problems have been solved.
Bulgaria remains a
struggling democracy, and its
people are profoundly discouraged by a
persistently
low standard of living and high unemployment. Politics
are
wildly unpredictable, corruption and organized
crime are common, and the
ghosts of communism hover.
One symbol of Bulgaria's situation is this: Its
last
czar, Simeon II, is the current prime minister, under
the name
Simeon Saks Koburgotski. His appears to be
the only case of a former king
winning election to
become prime minister of his country.
Saks Koburgotski is a Bulgarization of his real name,
Simeon
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. His family, originally
German, is related to almost all
the royal families of
Europe. As Simeon, he sat on the Bulgarian throne
from
1943 to 1946, between the ages of 6 and 9; his reign
began when
Bulgaria was an ally of Nazi Germany.
Exiled for the entire Communist
period, he married a
wealthy Spanish woman and lived in Madrid,
raising
five children.
When the Communist government fell, Simeon (as
everyone here still seems
to call him) decided he
would run for the largely ceremonial position
of
president, a kind of elected king. The constitutional
court blocked
him from running for president, because
five years' residency was required
and he had only a
few weeks'. So Simeon, or Koburgotski, now 65,
created
a new political party and entered the 2001
parliamentary
elections.
His timing was excellent. The sitting government of
the Union of
Democratic Forces had saved Bulgaria from
economic disaster in 1997, but by
2000 it was
extremely unpopular. Living standards remained
low,
corruption was rife, and the Union of Democratic
Forces prime
minister, Ivan Kostov, had earned a
reputation for arrogance.
Now, however, with his 800 days more than half over
and many problems
remaining unfixed, Simeon, or
Koburgotski, has lost half the support he had
in the
June 2001 election, according to public opinion polls.
The former
czar is Topic A in Sofia, the capital, but
outside of town his name is not
mentioned as often. An
excursion to Pernik, an industrial city to
the
southwest, presents a different reality. The smokeless
smokestacks
towering above the town are the first
clue.
The city's factories are mostly shuttered. The
unemployment rate in
Pernik is at least 60 percent.
Unemployed men sat in outdoor cafes on a
recent
Saturday drinking vodka and wine.
''I don't even want to talk about my country,'' said
Assen Petrov, 48,
an engineer who had been laid off by
the local water company who now sells
Turkish- and
Greek-made shoes from a forlorn storefront downtown.
He has
a daughter at a university in Sofia, but he has
advised her, ''when you get
your degree, just leave
the country,'' as nearly a million young Bulgarians
have.
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