Lyutvi Mestan, leader of liberal party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), has expressed firm support for Bulgaria's socialist-led coalition government.

Prime Minister Plamen Oresharski gave a press conference Monday with the leaders of the parties supporting the Cabinet, Lyutvi Mestan (DPS) and Sergey Stanishev (the Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP) to an audience of over 200 journalists. The press conference was aimed at dispelling doubts of backstage policymaking.

Mestan, as cited by Darik radio, pointed out that DPS would insist on the right of Bulgarians living in Ukraine to speak their mother tongue.

The leader of DPS insisted that the Ukrainian government had no right to impose language restrictions on the Bulgarian minority living in the country.

He brought up the matter in connection with DPS' demands for conducting an election campaign in a native language other than Bulgarian.

Mestan insisted that DPS simply sought to introduce a European standard in the sphere, adding that DPS disagreed with BSP and center-right party GERB (Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria) and nationalist party Ataka on the matter.

He vowed that the different views of the parties on the mother tongue issue would not destabilize the Oresharski Cabinet, regardless of the great importance of the topic for DPS.

Mestan also pledged bigger payments for agricultural producers.

He claimed that a fundamental error had been made in the previous programming period as a result of which a mere 6% of agricultural producers received the major portion of direct payments.

He said that small producers would start receiving bigger payments as of 2014 to solve the problem.

Mestan informed that all small and medium-sized farms processing plots of up to 300 decares would receive BGN 45 instead of the current payment of BGN 30 per decare.

He said that the increase in payments for small and medium-sized agricultural producers would not affect large-scale producers, who would keep getting BGN 30 per decare.

The leader of DPS claimed that the segment of small, at-risk agricultural producers, processing land plots of hectare or two, would receive a constant subsidy of EUR 1250 without the obligation to meet concrete production targets.

He said that the step was the most radical change about which agricultural producers could dream over the past seven years of Bulgaria's EU membership.

As regards controversial DPS MP Delyan Peevski, whose appointment as national security agency chief triggered a lasting wave of mass anti-government protests, Mestan accused GERB leader Boyko Borisov of hypocrisy.

Mestan underscored that Borisov, who had repeatedly spoken against Peevski, had turned out to have had numerous meetings with him.

He reminded that Borisov had occasionally presented Peevski as a symbol of evil, at the same time seeking to create an image of a fighter against evil for himself.

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