A LETTER FROM BULGARIA
Dear friends,
We read with great interest your article
on freedom of information in Eastern Europe ("Access denied?" August)
- a greatly underestimated issue in post-communist transition. In recent years,
however, Transitions’ coverage would suggest that Bulgaria is the least
problematic transitional society. It is true that we have no civil or ethnic
wars, but the failure
of reforms here and the ongoing agony of pseudo-transition is no less
dramatic. Our people were forced to pay a severe price for nothing and are
still forced so.
The Bulgarians are specific with their
dysfunctional individualistic response to illegitimate power and our rulers have learned to misuse these mentalities. THIS should be discussed and a special agenda
should be set against manipulative exclusion in pseudo-democracy.
Monitoring access of information
practices, as done by the Access to Information Foundation in Bulgaria, is a
positive development but we should like to point at the great deficits in
legislative guarantees
for transparency and real civic inclusion that could block manipulative exclusion and corruptive power.
In 1995 the "Free information
society" emerged as an informal civic group decided to resist the arbitrary dismissal of a Bill initially ordered by the
Government and worked out by a group of experts - the Information Bill. We
decided to address the wider public who are actually the victims of secrecy,
manipulation, missing public dialogue and gaps in information rights.
We raised the issues of information and participatory rights because manipulative exclusion and indirect
control are major instruments of
post-communist pseudo-democratic regimes and because more rights of that kind
could compensate some other deficiencies of our citizenry (in capital, in
democratic tradition and political experience).
Our point here is that (1) information
resources are much more developed and accessible today and (2) that our people
are EDUCATED ENOUGH to quickly master their new civic roles. They are neither
so ignorant nor that much traditional in their thinking BUT HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY SUPPRESSED
AND EXCLUDED (were given no chance) by
authoritarian, totalitarian and lately - backstage-mafia regimes. The
problem is not so much in mentality and economic retardation but mainly in
CORRUPTED POWER operating out of civic control and hence dismembering society.
Official myth-makers love to label our
people as retarded, inert, paternalistic and lacking respect for state and
law but they forget the policies of cultural, financial and legal
deprivation/discrimination as major factors reproducing such
mentalities. Hence what we need is `anchoring' the state in society by
empowering the individual with MORE CIVIL RIGHTS.
In our case all power
resources are so unevenly distributed (concentrated in the hands of the ex-nomenclatura and
ex-secret-police officials) that civil society can't even emerge by
itself. It is easily displaced by ex-communist imitations and effects no real
shift in power balance.
No `third strata' exists
here since potential citizens were twice expropriated by state or ex-state officials - once
in 1948 by the nationalization and again after 1985-89 by "wild"
privatisation, manipulated "inflation", fake (nomenclatura)
"banks" etc.
Hence democratisation here requires MORE DEMOCRATIC RIGHTS for the impoverished
though no retarded citizenry. The disbalance in power is great and specific so
a specific set of means is needed for a real inclusion in politics and
overwhelming of mafia power.
In this context information and participatory rights are
not just a luxury but
a chief priority in a post-communist democratic
agenda. Without them multi-party elections and media pluralism are not shifting
the power from our ex-rulers to society. A weaker though not retarded citizenry
faced by over-concentrated political AND ECONOMIC power NEEDS and is CAPABLE of
running a stronger democracy. This is our major thesis. (see fuller version,
Petition and links for discussion at https://members.tripod.com/~freeinf
)
Already in June 1996 we appealed to the Parliament to open public debate on
the bill of information that was mysteriously dropped off the agenda few years
ago. We have printed and disseminated 5000 leaflets appealing
to citizens to support demands for information and participatory rights. We
have organized two seminars (Nov. 1996 and
March 1997) and held a pres-conference trying (unsuccessfully) to appear in the
news. Major dailies, national
TV and radio ignored us.
In Jan. 1997 we started collection of signatures under a petition demanding
civil rights and calling ex-officials to account for ruining the country,
blocking the reforms and assisting the pillaging of national capital. We
demanded exposure of illegal capital and checking corruption by massive civic
inclusion. At that time we assisted the emergence of "Civic participation
society" in Sofia.
In Oct. 1997 we entered the Petition signed by 6000 people in three parliamentary
commissions (the legislative one, the civil rights one and that for culture and
media). Recently only one of them answered that we should find a deputy to
enter detailed drafts. So our demands incl. that for public discussion, were not heard and again were silenced
by the media.
The new regime has promised
"dialogue" and "social contract" but has
"forgotten" to negotiate its terms with the public. Concrete
legislative projects - e.g. the drafts of laws about illegally acquired
properties and taxation of undeclared revenues vanished
from the agenda without any explanation. Existing legislation allowing
inspection of illegal property is not implemented.
An easiest way is to compare income declarations and the huge immovable
possessions where citizens could be of help if these declarations (incl. those of
public persons and managers of state firms and banks) were not a secret in
Bulgaria.
We had a number of spectacular show-campaigns (taking and returning expensive cars by
prosecutors, several arrests of minor bankers, recently - commissions checking
the origin of properties etc.). We have waited and are still waiting but we see
ONLY new waves of threats and `gestures' against mafia-power and corruption. Financial
inspection of only SOME big mafia firms has started
recently. A list of credit-millionaires with $1.5 billion unsettled debts was
published but it is incomplete and `toothless' (see our website).
The new government has not as yet asked any foreign
government for help in taking back illegally exported
state capital (some $18 billion). At least $ 4 billion could be restored
from abroad, experts say but no moves are taken in this direction.
The "blue"("right") Chief
Prosecutor is providing as far the best
protection for the "red"("left")
mafias. He is their "secret weapon". Cases are blocked and
jammed, gangsters are set free and later returned by Interpol at much greater
expenses... and the man is untouchable and unaccountable to anybody. We were
recently denied information about his actual contribution as chief-prosecutor.
The draining of
savings continues in new forms. Taxes are not reduced but new were
invented (in neighbouring Macedonia the profit-taxis is 15% since 1994 while
here they are still discussing lowering it from30 to 28%). So the once robbed
public is now forced to pay again a `transition price' while nobody is
disturbing the red-barons that had pillaged the economy without reforming it.
The "previous ones" are silently being forgiven for all the harms
they have done to our community. Their "dirty" fortunes, stolen from
the people via state politics and property are being silently legalized.
A really positive effort was made to
resettle the gas contract with Russia excluding a useless intermediary but this
would hardly change the ill balance of power inside the country since no responsibility
was claimed for the enormous loses and draining of public money.
The drafting of new electronic media legislation was scandalously
delayed in Bulgaria. The Bill of electronic media was twice discarded by
the Constitutional court and lately by a President's veto. We have sent (to
parliament and media) a vision of our members
for wider civic participation, transparency,
accessibility and democratic management of public
media. No one paid attention. And no rights were given to the people
in that respect- the legislation kept `friendly' for further manipulation and indirect
exclusion. That's the logic of pseudo reforms.
Disappointment
is rising not so
much out of economic hardships but out of missing "retribution",
"dialogue", "social contract", transparency, and due to the
unjust burdening of the whole nation while pardoning the
really guilty ones. Such policies ENCOURAGE incompetent rule and enrichment
via state power IN FUTURE. THEY and not the mental heritage undermine the
legitimacy of official power, respect for law and the very emergence of civic
culture.
The public media
gave no publicity to our demands. A 10-minutestransmission by the Second
program of the national radio was the only exception. The major dailies
"Trud" (Labour), "24 hours", "Continent",
"Novinar", "Standart" treated these demands as
non-existent. "We don't like some of your demands so we won't write about your petition", a
chief-editor ("Standart") plainly explained himself.
The problem of CLOSED
MEDIA clearly showed up in our campaign. A petition of 6000 citizens
was expelled from `reality' by our “independent media”. In Slovenia 5000
citizens can enter a bill in parliament, in Bulgaria 6000
petitioners are not even mentioned in the news. Gaps in political rights
and demands for them are not a problem and not an `event' for our media. The
political rights issue is overshadowed and expelled from public debate by the myth of "successful democracy". The people
are kept UNAWARE of their LEGAL and POLITICAL deprivation generating and
reproducing all the other kinds of deprivation.
We try to develop the intra-civic communication but without funding and
with closed media this is difficult to achieve. We have opened two free
websites - "Shady Affairs in Bulgaria" and "Civic
participation"- www.bulgariaonline.bg/freeinf
& https://members.tripod.com/~freeinf
but we can't open an Internet cafe
where access to public dialogue will be free and easy. We have a workable
scheme for a weekly civic `studio’ in national radio. It requires no additional
funding or change of major radio programs. But there is no will for such
experiments.
Our demands are
really `bad' for corrupted oligarchic power relying heavily on secrecy and manipulation. They cannot be distorted but
should only be silenced and removed from drafts in `closed chambers'. And that’s
what they are doing.
Without public debate and legislative
initiative for citizens gaps and selective reception of
western experience will persist. A good intention to pass a bill about
secrets and information was announced in the spring BUT no debate has started
and no drafts or conceptions have appeared as far.
Though having a chance till exclusion is
indirect, in small communities like our one dominated by powerful, incl.
foreign mafias autonomous civic initiative is embryonically
muffled and displaced by
imitations. Indirect exclusion is quite efficient when resources are so unevenly distributed. So we
need to combine our efforts with other civic groups in Bulgaria and worldwide
striving for a wider democratic agenda.
Ivan Christof, pres. of Free Information
Society, Sofia