Sofia Mayor Boyko Borisov's "To Chicago and Back"

During his meeting with members of the Bulgarian immigrant community in Chicago on Wednesday, which took place in the St. Ivan of Rila Church, the Sofia Mayor and informal leader of the GERB party, Boyko Borisov, made certain statements, which spurred real hue and cry back home in Bulgaria.

In this article, I am not going to comment on the personality, political career, background, etc. of Borisov, neither am I going to discuss his party GERB and its political ambitions. I am just going to pick two of his statements, and discuss them pointing out why, despite the Mayor's inappropriate wording, they do make sense.

Because the fact of the matter is that, first of all, Borisov's statements do describe very real and grave issues for contemporary Bulgaria. And, second, it is remarkable that a top-ranking Bulgarian politician, and a hopeful for the Prime Minister position, finally put them so sharply in public.

The Sofia Mayor told the Bulgarian expats in Chicago that Bulgaria's greatest problem was its "bad human material", and that the country had one million Roma, several hundred thousand Turks, and 2,5 million retirees nostalgic for the great communist past. At the same time, 1,5 million of Bulgaria's best and brightest have left the country in the recent years.

For these words, Borisov was accused of fascism and political cynicism by fellow politicians in Sofia. Obviously, he couldn't choose a worse word than "material" when talking about Bulgaria's population - everyone knows it was the Nazis who talked about "good" and "bad" "human material".

But what happens when you substitute the word "material" for "human capital" or "human resources" in Borisov's statement? Isn't it true that Bulgaria has "bad human capital"? It certainly is.

Now, "bad" is also not the right word - low-skilled, low-qualified, badly educated, with low levels of political culture and civic activism - any one of these would have been a much more appropriate wording for what the Sofia Mayor apparently had in mind.

The fact is, though, that dozens of studies of international institutions, among other sources, have been stressing that the quality of Bulgaria's human resources is declining - this includes education, productivity, political participation and culture, civic awareness and activism, age structure, i.e. all the crucial prerequisites for building a healthy, dynamic, high-tech economy, a real civil society, and a prosperous state.

Bulgaria does have one of the worst (if not THE worst) demographic situations in the world. Bulgaria does have 2,5 million retired persons longing for the days of their youth, which happen to coincide with the country's communist past. Bulgaria does suffer the effects of the brain drain with 1,5 million qualified, young laborers emigrating after 1990. (While the country's population is on the decline, various statistics state between 300 000 and 500 000 Bulgarian babies have been born abroad in the recent years).

Bulgaria does have sizable ethnic minorities which are not well-integrated with the rest of the society. In general, the Bulgarian Roma are poorly educated, have lower standard of living, and lower political culture than the average Bulgarian citizens. (It is a whole other question why this is the situation of the Roma minority, and what should be done to improve it.) The Bulgarian Turks, while better integrated with the society than the Roma, could always be affected in their behavior by their potential affiliation with neighboring Turkey.

I believe this is what Borisov's words were supposed to stand for - stressing Bulgaria's issues with its aging population, the brain drain, and its pretty miserable failure to integrate properly its sizable Roma and Turkish minorities with the rest of the society. These are grave issues that contemporary Bulgaria must tackle immediately it wants to survive not to mention prosper.

And the fact that the GERB leader Borisov chose probably the worst possible words to put them does not change the grave reality that he described.

The Sofia Mayor also mentioned something else in this respect - the well-known fact that certain political forces in Bulgaria have been enjoying voting support along ethnic and age lines. Clearly, the overwhelming majority of the Bulgarian Turks have been voting for the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), while the majority of the Bulgarian retirees have been voting for the Bulgarian Socialist Party, the descendant of the former Communist Party. On top of that, the minorities and the pensioners usually have a much higher voter turnout than the general population.

I will leave aside the allegations that the DPS and the BSP are manipulating these two population groups in various ways in order to control their votes. I am just going to point out that if any allegedly democratic state has overwhelming voting divisions along ethnic and age lines, its situation is really precarious...

As a citizen of the Republic of Bulgaria, I am clearly not OK with the fact that my government might be elected by people who vote for a certain party based on their ethnic affiliations, and on their longing for their youth gone by long ago...

As far as the brain drain is concerned, I do believe that everyone should have the right to travel and live wherever they want, as I myself have done it. But I also see Borisov's point in calling for efforts to attract our compatriots back home from abroad by presenting them with better opportunities in Bulgaria.

The plan for making Macedonia friendly to Bulgaria that the Sofia Mayor outlined in Chicago is the other case in hand. What he said in this respect was also badly framed but did make a valid point about how Bulgaria should protect its national interests.

Essentially, Borisov argued that Bulgaria should exert economic and political influence over Macedonia in order to make the Skopje government recognize the actual history of the Macedonian land, and to improve the condition of those Macedonian citizens who regard themselves as Bulgarian.

This statement is especially remarkable because it is probably the first instance in the recent years in which a top Bulgarian politician says that Bulgaria has clear strategic interests with respect to Macedonia, and suggests a way to go about pursuing them.

Because we do have thousands of people who see themselves as Bulgarians in contemporary Macedonia, and they do face social pressure. We do need economic cooperation with our neighbors. And we do need to stand firmly for our interests like every self-respecting sovereign nation does instead of bending over... every time Moscow, Washington, Brussels, and even Ankara and Athens ask us to do so...

To sum up - the Sofia Mayor Boyko Borisov did choose really bad words in Chicago, words that didn't make him look too good. But at the same time, among other things, he did send strong messages about actually identifying some of the nation's gravest problems, and the ways to go about solving them.

In these two particular cases - by trying to attract our best and brightest back home, and by pushing firmly for our interests in neighboring Macedonia.

* "To Chicago and Back" is a book by the Bulgarian writer Aleko Konstantinov published in 1894. It is a travel book with powerful social critique describing his journey from Bulgaria to the USA.

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