Bulgaria's PM Calls for End to Hunger Strike, but In Vain

Edvin Sugarev, poet, intellectual and former MP of the right-wing Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) party, photo by BGNES

Edvin Sugarev, poet, intellectual and former MP of the right-wing Union of Democratic Forces (UDF) party, refuses to end his hunger strike against the socialist-led government even after the personal request by the prime minister.

“Plamen Oresharski called me on the phone, asking me to stop my hunger strike. I firmly said no,” Sugarev told Nova TV channel.

"I am still at the very beginning of my hunger strike and I feel ok for the time being,” he said on the fifth day of his protest."

"Bulgaria has been brought to the state of absurdity. With my protest I want to assure all those who feel things are wrong here that things have never been that serious and we are already hanging between life and death."

As he launched his protest on Wednesday Sugarev said he was ready to starve to death in his protest.

The hunger strike, during which Sugarev will only be drinking water, is not the first protest of this kind for him. In 1993 he went on a hunger strike against then-President Zhelyo Zhelev, stirring controversy among right-wingers.

"Go in peace, Mr. Prime Minister! For a 12th consecutive day, thousands of Bulgarians have demanded your resignation, and you keep pretending you are not hearing their voices coming from below the windows of your office, that you do not understand their demands, and you cannot feel their insistence," Sugarev declared in an open letter to the media.

Sugarev accused Oresherski of pursuing opaque policies and of manipulating people into thinking that Bulgaria will descend into chaos if the government was ousted.

He drew attention to the ties of the Oresharski cabinet with oligarchs, comparing the current government to the government headed by the deceased Professor Lyuben Berov.

He went on to list all of Oresharski's inadequate appointments, including that of notorious media tycoon Delyan Peevski as head of the State Agency for National Security, DANS, that of Ivan Ivanov, whose ties with the organized criminal group SIC were exposed last week, as Deputy Interior Minister, and Foreign Minister Kristiyan Vigenin, who vowed to reinstate former collaborators of the communist-era State Security (DS) at diplomatic posts.

Sugarev concluded that the program of the Oresharski cabinet offered generous promises of "meager social bonuses."

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