Bulgarian Ex Dissident to Run for President

1980s Bulgarian dissident Nikolay Vasilev announced Sunday that he will file his name as an independent candidate for Bulgaria's October 23 presidential elections.

Nikolay Vasilev, a professor of philosophy at the Sofia University and a public intellectual and satirist, was a critic of the communist regime that ruled Bulgaria 1944-1989.

He entered politics in 1990 when he chaired the Alternative Social-Liberal Party.

Sunday he stated that this fall he will run as an independent candidate, since "parties are the bane of the transition in Bulgaria."

"Parties have become corporations servicing the interests of their leaders and financial supporters," quipped Prof. Vasilev.

He was also critical of what he saw as a feeble and criminal economic life in the country and the downfall in the field of culture and education.

Nikolay Vasilev was Bulgaria's Minister of Education in Bulgaria's first rightist government after 1989, the short-lived cabinet of Union of Democratic Forces leader Filip Dimitrov (1991-2).

Has no relation to his namesake in the cabinet of Simeon Saxe-Coburg, Nikolay Vasilev, who served as Minister of Public Administration.

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