There is a common principle about dignity, power and beauty. All are in the eye of the beholder. Like that other sought-after commodity, respect, all are based on the perceptions of others. You cannot demand what you cannot command.
Is Georgi Purvanov one of nature’s statesmen, or is he simply an incredibly skilled politician? Do dignity, power and respect attend him simply because of his office, or does he have a quality that keeps him in that hallowed stratosphere somewhere above the griminess and viciousness of daily politics?
His detractors have tried, and especially because 2006 was an election year, tried very hard in the past 12 months, to portray him as a deceitful hustler, a politico like any other. Purvanov seemed to breeze through it all unruffled. The second term as President that he won this year is the last allowed him by the constitution. One day, he will be out of a job, and while journalists customarily remind us that he is an historian, it seems that Purvanov would be well qualified to lecture political science; or go where the better money is, and be a political consultant.
But all of that is in the future, and this is about Purvanov’s past 12 months. And about his deeper past.
In January, Purvanov addressed Parliament, to mark the anniversary of the day in 2002 when he took office. In a wide-ranging speech, he underlined a message of ethnic and all other forms of tolerance. He did so against a background of continuing concern about intolerance in Bulgaria, of which Volen Siderov’s Ataka is the most public festering manifestation. On his own office, Purvanov let it be known that he favoured the presidency becoming more active, rather than ceremonial, although he said that he did not want a presidential republic (perhaps a reference to the 2003 wish by the then-chief secretary of the Interior Ministry Boiko Borissov for just such a constitutional change. At the time Purvanov was speaking, there was speculation that Borissov could attempt to vault from the office of mayor of Sofia to becoming head of state).
Political and media critics decried Purvanov’s remarks to Parliament, in which he also detailed what he had been up to in terms of foreign visits, vetoes of legislation and other actions, as an election campaign speech. Well, they would, wouldn’t they? And just what was he supposed to have talked to them about?
Perhaps the fact that he allegedly had been a communist-era agent of state security. By May, he acknowledged that there was a dossier on him. We found out that he had the code-name Gotse. Purvanov said that he had turned up on the radar and been given a code-name because of his work under communism as an historian. His hard-core critics declined to believe his involvement had been as innocuous as that. Ahead of the October election, anti-Purvanovites set up a website, Gotse.net. Purvanov seemed to be a little sensitive about the name. Interviewed about a controversy involving the historical figure Gotse Delchev, Purvanov referred to him only as “Delchev”. Just did not want to say the G-word.
Purvanov did not allow himself to be seriously distracted by smear attempts. He stuck to his day job, vetoing and returning to Parliament for improvement the laws, respectively, on the commercial register and on people with disabilities. He made fresh attempts to intercede with Libyan leader Muammar Gaddaffi on behalf of the Bulgarian medics in Libya. He represented Bulgaria in new attempts to achieve progress on the Bourgas-Alexandropoulis pipeline. He joined in the promotional campaign to ensure Bulgaria’s EU accession. He took initiatives towards a solution to Bulgaria’s demographic problems. He turned out for charity sports matches, including as a player. In short, as an item on the public payroll, Purvanov was value for money.
Purvanov allowed an election campaign to be run on his behalf, themed on him being “The President”. To paraphrase the first Bush, it was the dignity thing. His election campaign poster depicted Purvanov’s face as a collage of a myriad Bulgarians. He went on whistle-stops to every city, town and apparently almost every village, and his campaign managed to make these look more like presidential visits than trawling for votes. In the second round, his opponent was the Hater-in-Chief, Siderov, who called Purvanov “Al Capone” and got about one vote for every four that went to Purvanov. In the second round, a number of traditional centre-right supporters held their noses and voted for Purvanov, immediate past leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, as the palatable alternative to the poison being hawked by Siderov. Voter turnout was low in both rounds, so it was with an air of quiet satisfaction rather than euphoria that Purvanov returned to his office and the desk that will remain his, assuming no unfortunate intervention, until January 2011.
