Bulgarian PM Mocks Socialists, Snubs Ethnic Turkish Leader's Early Election Calls

Politics » DOMESTIC | May 20, 2012, Sunday // 19:04
Bulgaria: Bulgarian PM Mocks Socialists, Snubs Ethnic Turkish Leader's Early Election Calls Bulgarian PM Borisov has ridiculed his political opponents. Photo by BGNES

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borisov has ruled out any possibilities of holding early parliamentary elections.

Borisov thus snubbed a forecast made a day earlier by opposition ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) leader Ahmed Dogan, who said he could "smell" early elections in October-November 2012 as a result of a collapse of the Cabinet of Borisov and his center-right party GERB.

Dogan's prediction coincided with the holding of the 48th Congress of the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party, which reelected its Chair and ex PM Sergey Stanishev with calls for toppling the GERB government.

"I am ruling out this option. Our officials are gaining status in Europe, we are building the Struma, Maritsa, and Hemus highways, we are renewing the country. You can see the construction going on everywhere," Borisov stated on Sunday at a press briefing at the Council of Ministers in Sofia, as cited by BGNES.

The PM, whose term expires in mid 2013, stressed his perception that the Socialist Party is afraid of the possibility of early elections, and that it is even more afraid of the ruling party GERB.

Borisov further slammed Dogan's ethnic Turkish party DPS for its Saturday's remembrance meeting at the southern Bulgarian town of Dzhebel called to remember the so called Revival Process (or Regeneration Process) – the campaign of the communist Bulgaria authorities in the late 1980s to force Bulgarian Muslims and ethnic Turks to adopt Slavic-Christian names as part of an assimilation campaign.

On Saturday, a GERB MP from the Kardzhali District, Tsveta Karayancheva, attempted to speak during the remembrance meeting but was prevented from the leadership of the DPS party, which, according to GERB, is attempting to "usurp" the memory of the tragic Revival Process events.

"How can they prevent a MP from speaking, and an alcohol-smelling person can walk around and explain what he was smelling", Borisov asked, apparently hinting that Ahmed Dogan, the ethnic Turkish party leader, was drunk at the Dzhebel rally.

"Dogan is urging me in this way to stage early elections because only GERB and DPS are ready for such elections," Borisov said, while stressing that the Socialist Party, DPS's partner in the 2005-2009 three-way coalition government, is not prepared to put up an election fight.

"It is the most favorable thing for GERB to hold elections now but we are not in it for the power. We just want to leave something behind for the people," the PM stated.

"The Socialists actually held a congress in order to lash against me. Because they are really afraid of me," he added.

Borisov even urged what he described as GERB's sister parties – the Union of Democratic Forces and the Democrats for Strong Bulgaria party – which are currently in the process of dismantling their Blue Coalition – to become more active in identifying BSP and DPS as their enemies so that "GERB doesn't have to hold the anti-communist front alone."

While ridiculing the Bulgarian Socialist Party's Congress and criticizing it for not standing up to declare their position on "who Todor Zhivkov and Valko Chervenkov were" (i.e. Bulgaria's communist dictators – editor's note), Borisov congratulated Sergey Stanishev for winning reelection as BSP chair, hinting at fraud saying that Stanishev managed to outsmart ex President Georgi Parvanov, who also made a run for the party leadership but subsequently quit the race.

"Stanishev did it in a perfect way. Being able to crush such an apparatchik as Parvanov, and to make him quit – well done. This boy (i.e. Stanishev) has developed very well. We can now safely say that he is the deserved chairman of the BSP – he has mastered all apparatchik's games perfectly," Borisov said, while also ridiculing the Socialist delegates at the Congress some of whom were photographed looking at a picture of Borisov in downtown Sofia.

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Tags: Boyko Borisov, Sergey Stanishev, Ahmed Dogan, Georgi Parvanov, GERB, BSP, DPS, Movement for Rights and Freedoms, Bulgarian Socialist Party, early elections, Dzhebel, Revival Process, ethnic Turkish, Kadzhali, Tsveta Karayancheva, MPs, MP

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