Dilma the Bulgarian

New Brazilian President, Dilma Rousseff, pronounces her first speech after receiving the presidential ribbon by outgoing President Luiz In?cio Lula da Silva (not in picture), at the Planalto Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, on 01 January. Photo by EPA/BGNES

Brazil's new leftist president inspires Bulgarians to broaden their horizons.

by Boyko Vassilev*

Transitions Online

Boyko Borisov, the Bulgarian prime minister, rang in 2011 in a most unusual place – navy headquarters in faraway Brazil.

He was there not for his beloved soccer, nor for the samba or carnival. Borisov was attending the inauguration ceremony for the new Brazilian president, Dilma Vana Rousseff, who has made many Bulgarians into experts on Brazilian politics.

That's because Rousseff's father was a Bulgarian immigrant. A leftist, Petar (Pedro) Rousseff came from a respected Bulgarian family from the town of Gabrovo that included writers, intellectuals, businessmen, and lawyers. His sister was named Vana, hence the second name of the new Brazilian president. Dilma Rousseff acknowledges her Bulgarian roots, although she has never visited Bulgaria and does not speak Bulgarian.

Of course, it was not the Bulgarian origins that shaped her astonishing biography. Following her father – or maybe her inner calling – she embraced leftist ideas, became an economist, went to jail, joined the guerillas, opposed the military dictatorship, divorced twice, and beat cancer. Perhaps the move of her life was to join the leader who has become the most popular Brazilian president ever, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. She was his energy minister, then chief of staff. When Lula finished his second and last term, she was logically elected as his successor.

In Brazil everyone comes from somewhere else, so no one played particular attention to Rousseff's Bulgarian roots. At the very best, ordinary Brazilians reacted with a twist on the famous line from the movie Wag the Dog: "I didn't know Jim Belushi was Albanian." But it was different for Bulgarians. They followed Rousseff's success closely, rooting for "Our Dilma." Portuguese-speaking Bulgarian journalists went to Brazil to cover the vote, and one even managed to get an interview. When Rousseff won, Bulgarians rejoiced.

This all shows the funny ways "glocalization" works – globally and locally indeed. Smaller nations look for "their kin" in bigger nations and on the global stage. Kenyans partied after Barack Obama's victory. Irish looked for the distant cousins of Bill Clinton. Greeks pinned their hopes on Michael Dukakis – and later on Jennifer Aniston. Serbs and Croats watch closely every New World star with "-ich" in his family name (disgraced Illinois politician Rod Blagojevich may not have made them particularly proud). Bulgarians follow the artist Christo (Hristo Yavashev, from the very same Gabrovo). In Latin America they know the prominent Venezuelan politician and intellectual Teodoro Petkoff – another leftist, yet an ardent opponent of President Hugo Chavez.

It is interesting to observe how smaller nations' journalists (especially in the Balkans) make the world go around "their champions." If they prosper it's because of the spirit of their ancestors. If they suffer it's because of an evil cabal against them. No less interesting is when many nations claim one hero, such as in the case of inventor Nikola Tesla. He was of Serbian extraction, born in present-day Croatia as a citizen of Austria-Hungary – and later became a U.S. citizen.

Dilma Rousseff's success produced a funny episode of that kind. A Macedonian newspaper called her a Macedonian, making the geographical discovery that Gabrovo is in Macedonia (which it definitely is not). But despite those oddities, glocalization is rather a treat. It makes you feel part of the global game even if you are just a spectator.

Questions of pride aside, there are some opportunities for Bulgaria in the case of the first female and first economist Brazilian president with a Bulgarian family name. While many people still think about Brazil in terms of coffee, the Copacabana, and soccer king Pele, it has become the eighth-largest economy in the world (by some estimates the fifth). Brazil produces electronics, submarines, aircraft, ethanol, and satellites. Trade between the two countries is necessarily limited by the great distance and high transportation costs, but not wholly prevented. Bulgarians have eaten Brazilian turkeys for Christmas, so why not cooperate in high tech?

Perhaps this was on Borisov's mind when he grabbed the opportunity to attend Rousseff's inauguration and landed in Brazil with Foreign Minister Nikolay Mladenov and Transport and IT Minister Alexander Tsvetkov. It was worth it. Rousseff granted him an exclusive and warm reception two days before the ceremony. She not only said that she had not forgotten her roots but immediately got to work, calling her ministers to concrete talks with their Bulgarian counterparts. The defense minister even invited the Bulgarians to stay on New Year's Eve with him at the navy headquarters.

Rousseff is cast from the mold of the leftist pragmatist Lula, and in Borisov she may see a rightist one. The president spoke of a "new era" in relations between Brazil and Bulgaria, and concrete parameters were set on the issues of telecommunications, energy, and rail transport. Rousseff announced that she will include Bulgaria in her Europe 2011 visit and sent regards to the Bulgarian media; perhaps the sympathetic coverage has struck a chord. On his side, Borisov presented a detailed family tree of her Bulgarian ancestors, a portrait photo of her Aunt Vana and the greetings of EU President Herman Van Rompuy.

What can we read into these diplomatic gestures? An optimist will always see an opportunity: contemporary politics is often shaped by chance and personal affinity. Bulgaria could use this specific situation to achieve visibility and to do some business. But it may signal a major rethinking of what Bulgarian foreign policy should look like.

In the past 20 years that policy has been simple: the priorities were EU and NATO membership (which meant also excellent relations with the United States), energy issues with Russia, and regional politics in the Balkans. But now these topics are more or less settled. Isn't it time to use our imagination and look for new frontiers, keeping the old relationships in order?

Bulgaria could re-energize, for example, its relationships with Japan and India, left on the back burner in the last two decades. South Korea, with its astonishing technological development, is another opportunity. The Arab world and South Africa also loom. It's a pity that still too few Bulgarians study Chinese. Locked inside a painful transition, Bulgarians forgot the outside world, the media shortened their international coverage, embassies were closed, and one of the most curious nations was threatened with provincialization and self-imposed isolation.

Now the spell could be broken. The glocalization agenda sparks the imagination these days – and it should not stop with Dilma the Bulgarian. It's high time to open our eyes wide for tomorrow. A new decade is beginning; a whole world is waiting to be discovered.

*Boyko Vassilev is a moderator and producer of the weekly Panorama news talk show on Bulgarian National Television.

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