Regarding the statement you made in Vratsa about an eventual coup against Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg in collaboration with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms and the Union of Democratic Forces, would you please explain who is preparing such a coup, and when it will take place?
Bulgaria has never had more infantile, incapable and greater imitators of foreign models than the present Government. Many political experiments have been made in the past 12 years, but such a collaboration as the coming of the political adventurer Simeon Saxe Coburg has never happened before. That is why I think that a change can only occur when Bulgarians realise that political class is not able to give another alternative for ruling of the country. My deep conviction is that all the four parties in the present parliament are in one big coalition for keeping the status quo. This coalition enables them to cover all the corruption schemes conducted in the past 12 years.
But is a coup being prepared, and in whose interest is it?
I think that really there are factors from the outside that are not factors on a governmental level but are rather definite economic groups abroad. They have common interests connected with the finalisation of the sweetest part of privatisation in Bulgaria and the long term concessions of airports and ports in the country. Few financial speculations are being prepared with the state reserve, which has been separated from privatisations by the Bulgarian taxpayer. I think that if they infringe the state reserve then the state will go bankrupt. Some operations are connected with national security and rearmament, and these will all aim to stabilise the country for a year for people from this Government, even at the cost of a coup against Simeon Saxe Coburg.
His eventual successor will be either Milen Velchev (Finance Minister) or Solomon Passi (Foreign Minister).
Who will you support after an eventual coup?
I support the investigation of the present Cabinet and those from all the governments after November 10, according to Chapter One of the Penal Code, which is for crimes committed against the Republic. I would like to see them all wearing striped clothes in Bulgarian jails.
How do you assess the Bulgartabac's privatisation failure?
This was a farce, which aimed to sell off Bulgartabac in parts, and I predict this will happen within a year.
According to Minister of Economy Nikolai Vassilev, agrarian land has been separated into 25 million parts. Do you think that this can help the establishment of a modern agriculture?
Nikolai Vassilev knows of agriculture as much as I know of nuclear physics. Such infantile persons have no right to comment on the agrarian sector at all. They are not competent to do so. Bulgaria needs to implement a generally and cardinally new agrarian policy strategy. Urgent measures need to be taken and the State Agriculture Fund needs to be closed down.
As leader of the BAPU, what is your opinion about the condition of the agrarian movement in Bulgaria? Are you an adherent of the idea for one united agrarian block in the country?
The consolidation of the agrarian movement is something useful and important for the country because this is the only unique Bulgarian cause born on native Bulgarian land and not imported like the social democracy from Geneva and liberal ideas from abroad. BAPU is necessary for Bulgaria now more than at any other time when the state abutments have been destroyed. When the value system of the political elite has been devalued, and when the survival of the party and political system has been put under question, BAPU's role is more urgent.
Historically speaking, BAPU is the only political power that gained its power peacefully through a ballot, and BAPU has been ousted only by a military coup. That is why I have devoted many years for the common consolidated BAPU cause in one juristic subject. I think that we have achieved what needed to happen years ago. The fact is that there are other two fractions except BAPU headed by Anastasia Mozer and Georgi Pinchev, which are satellite structures of other political parties. You know that Mozer is in the Union of Democratic Forces and United Democratic Forces. This does not change our cause but we consider that similar people do not help in any way to illustrate that BAPU is a modern and adequate political party.
Are you a follower of the idea to create one agrarian union?
I am not only a follower, but I could say that I am the architect of this idea with concrete mechanisms and stages for its achievement. I have concrete acts and deeds for that, not just some talk. We created these concrete deeds aimed at transforming BAPU into one monolithic and independent political subject. While people of retirement age under the influence of external powers head some fractions, I have the feeling that this cannot be realised.
Would you draw any comparison between BAPU and Alexander Stamboliski's agrarian union, irrespective of the differences in epochs?
Alexander Stamboliski is a famous figure who in that hard time, after three consecutive wars and two national catastrophes, managed to take the nation out of the common despair that grasped the people. He managed to give exact parameters of his ideas and the ideas of the BAPU in 1909. Stamboliski was the top figure of the twentieth century. He is recognised by both Europe and the US, and I think that what he did for Bulgaria as a great statesman and patriot is hard to repeat. His ideas are eternal.
I consider that especially in some fields we will follow what he used to do. Stamboliski's idea for the creation of a strong middle class in Bulgarian villages exist today. His reforming spirit was large because in the period of his being Prime Minister in 1919-23, more than 101 laws were made in all spheres of public and political life. This included the field of national security, education, and culture. Today Bulgaria also needs the Engineering Army initiated by Stamboliiski - we will never forgive the UDF for closing down that Engineering Army. Recently, George Bush came out with a similar project, which copies Stamboliski's project.
Do you work with any international partners abroad and have you found support outside Bulgaria's framework?
We work with one international political project at present, involved with the creation of the International Alliance of Agrarian Centrist parties. We keep good relations with many political organisations. Some of them attended our congress. The Croatian Agrarian Party headed by Zlatko Tomchici, Speaker of the Croatian parliament, the Polish Village party, Russia's agrarian party, Austria and Germany's village union, the Finnish centre party and the Romanian Village party as well as the American Farmers' Union are working with BAPU. Globally I think that the classical political doctrines will be seriously transformed. There is a place in the world for one international alliance of the agrarian centrist parties.
Do you have any priorities in your international contacts?
These priorities are aimed at the spheres of ecology, sustainable development, and the eco-social agrarian field. There are other spheres connected with tourism and high-tech economic projects on which we work and are interested. All these could be realised after the state gets out of the labyrinth of constantly unfulfilled hopes and of this political rambling.
Do you think that BAPU has a political future?
I think that BAPU will play a key part from now on. BAPU has given political electoral credits to all sides and now it will start gaining them back with interest. BAPU's role is increasing, especially at the time when a representative of the Saxe-Coburg dynasty is in power. Like grandfather, like grandson - either with his actions or his inertness he will lead the country to a new national catastrophe. There is no other political power possessing such strong and tested reform ideas as BAPU. Sooner or later BAPU will be not only be a leadership party but a ruling party as well.
What is your evaluation of the state's handling of pre-accession funds and the agrarian sector?
Bulgaria has no agrarian policy. What has been done in the past 12 years is the patching of temporary misbalances in one or another sub-branch of agriculture. Bulgaria has never been lucky with ministers of agriculture. All of them came like experienced experts and left like dilettantes. Mehmed Dikme (Minister of Agriculture and Forestry) is such. There is no clear long-term strategy. What has been done is an improvisation that has nothing in common with the common European agrarian policy. Our country has no organised agrarian subject to be able to apply to the SAPARD programme. And this, combined with the lack of mortgage and guarantee funds, practically renders the SAPARD programme meaningless. In their EU negotiations, Bulgarian representatives do not negotiate, they only agree. I have information that the clauses signed so far transform Bulgaria from a producer-country into a country-user.
Is there any crisis in the agrarian sector?
I think that the crisis exists and its escalation will be after June 15 in Dobrudja and the Ludogorie regions.
Bulgaria has never had more infantile, incapable and greater imitators of foreign models than the present Government. Many political experiments have been made in the past 12 years, but such a collaboration as the coming of the political adventurer Simeon Saxe Coburg has never happened before. That is why I think that a change can only occur when Bulgarians realise that political class is not able to give another alternative for ruling of the country. My deep conviction is that all the four parties in the present parliament are in one big coalition for keeping the status quo. This coalition enables them to cover all the corruption schemes conducted in the past 12 years.
But is a coup being prepared, and in whose interest is it?
I think that really there are factors from the outside that are not factors on a governmental level but are rather definite economic groups abroad. They have common interests connected with the finalisation of the sweetest part of privatisation in Bulgaria and the long term concessions of airports and ports in the country. Few financial speculations are being prepared with the state reserve, which has been separated from privatisations by the Bulgarian taxpayer. I think that if they infringe the state reserve then the state will go bankrupt. Some operations are connected with national security and rearmament, and these will all aim to stabilise the country for a year for people from this Government, even at the cost of a coup against Simeon Saxe Coburg.
His eventual successor will be either Milen Velchev (Finance Minister) or Solomon Passi (Foreign Minister).
Who will you support after an eventual coup?
I support the investigation of the present Cabinet and those from all the governments after November 10, according to Chapter One of the Penal Code, which is for crimes committed against the Republic. I would like to see them all wearing striped clothes in Bulgarian jails.
How do you assess the Bulgartabac's privatisation failure?
This was a farce, which aimed to sell off Bulgartabac in parts, and I predict this will happen within a year.
According to Minister of Economy Nikolai Vassilev, agrarian land has been separated into 25 million parts. Do you think that this can help the establishment of a modern agriculture?
Nikolai Vassilev knows of agriculture as much as I know of nuclear physics. Such infantile persons have no right to comment on the agrarian sector at all. They are not competent to do so. Bulgaria needs to implement a generally and cardinally new agrarian policy strategy. Urgent measures need to be taken and the State Agriculture Fund needs to be closed down.
As leader of the BAPU, what is your opinion about the condition of the agrarian movement in Bulgaria? Are you an adherent of the idea for one united agrarian block in the country?
The consolidation of the agrarian movement is something useful and important for the country because this is the only unique Bulgarian cause born on native Bulgarian land and not imported like the social democracy from Geneva and liberal ideas from abroad. BAPU is necessary for Bulgaria now more than at any other time when the state abutments have been destroyed. When the value system of the political elite has been devalued, and when the survival of the party and political system has been put under question, BAPU's role is more urgent.
Historically speaking, BAPU is the only political power that gained its power peacefully through a ballot, and BAPU has been ousted only by a military coup. That is why I have devoted many years for the common consolidated BAPU cause in one juristic subject. I think that we have achieved what needed to happen years ago. The fact is that there are other two fractions except BAPU headed by Anastasia Mozer and Georgi Pinchev, which are satellite structures of other political parties. You know that Mozer is in the Union of Democratic Forces and United Democratic Forces. This does not change our cause but we consider that similar people do not help in any way to illustrate that BAPU is a modern and adequate political party.
Are you a follower of the idea to create one agrarian union?
I am not only a follower, but I could say that I am the architect of this idea with concrete mechanisms and stages for its achievement. I have concrete acts and deeds for that, not just some talk. We created these concrete deeds aimed at transforming BAPU into one monolithic and independent political subject. While people of retirement age under the influence of external powers head some fractions, I have the feeling that this cannot be realised.
Would you draw any comparison between BAPU and Alexander Stamboliski's agrarian union, irrespective of the differences in epochs?
Alexander Stamboliski is a famous figure who in that hard time, after three consecutive wars and two national catastrophes, managed to take the nation out of the common despair that grasped the people. He managed to give exact parameters of his ideas and the ideas of the BAPU in 1909. Stamboliski was the top figure of the twentieth century. He is recognised by both Europe and the US, and I think that what he did for Bulgaria as a great statesman and patriot is hard to repeat. His ideas are eternal.
I consider that especially in some fields we will follow what he used to do. Stamboliski's idea for the creation of a strong middle class in Bulgarian villages exist today. His reforming spirit was large because in the period of his being Prime Minister in 1919-23, more than 101 laws were made in all spheres of public and political life. This included the field of national security, education, and culture. Today Bulgaria also needs the Engineering Army initiated by Stamboliiski - we will never forgive the UDF for closing down that Engineering Army. Recently, George Bush came out with a similar project, which copies Stamboliski's project.
Do you work with any international partners abroad and have you found support outside Bulgaria's framework?
We work with one international political project at present, involved with the creation of the International Alliance of Agrarian Centrist parties. We keep good relations with many political organisations. Some of them attended our congress. The Croatian Agrarian Party headed by Zlatko Tomchici, Speaker of the Croatian parliament, the Polish Village party, Russia's agrarian party, Austria and Germany's village union, the Finnish centre party and the Romanian Village party as well as the American Farmers' Union are working with BAPU. Globally I think that the classical political doctrines will be seriously transformed. There is a place in the world for one international alliance of the agrarian centrist parties.
Do you have any priorities in your international contacts?
These priorities are aimed at the spheres of ecology, sustainable development, and the eco-social agrarian field. There are other spheres connected with tourism and high-tech economic projects on which we work and are interested. All these could be realised after the state gets out of the labyrinth of constantly unfulfilled hopes and of this political rambling.
Do you think that BAPU has a political future?
I think that BAPU will play a key part from now on. BAPU has given political electoral credits to all sides and now it will start gaining them back with interest. BAPU's role is increasing, especially at the time when a representative of the Saxe-Coburg dynasty is in power. Like grandfather, like grandson - either with his actions or his inertness he will lead the country to a new national catastrophe. There is no other political power possessing such strong and tested reform ideas as BAPU. Sooner or later BAPU will be not only be a leadership party but a ruling party as well.
What is your evaluation of the state's handling of pre-accession funds and the agrarian sector?
Bulgaria has no agrarian policy. What has been done in the past 12 years is the patching of temporary misbalances in one or another sub-branch of agriculture. Bulgaria has never been lucky with ministers of agriculture. All of them came like experienced experts and left like dilettantes. Mehmed Dikme (Minister of Agriculture and Forestry) is such. There is no clear long-term strategy. What has been done is an improvisation that has nothing in common with the common European agrarian policy. Our country has no organised agrarian subject to be able to apply to the SAPARD programme. And this, combined with the lack of mortgage and guarantee funds, practically renders the SAPARD programme meaningless. In their EU negotiations, Bulgarian representatives do not negotiate, they only agree. I have information that the clauses signed so far transform Bulgaria from a producer-country into a country-user.
Is there any crisis in the agrarian sector?
I think that the crisis exists and its escalation will be after June 15 in Dobrudja and the Ludogorie regions.
