* Almost 100 university lecturers from all around the country have expressed in an open letter their support for Ranobudnite studenti and stood up against Sergei Stanishev’s statement that after two of the biggest student protest movements in Bulgaria (in 1989 and 1997) the results were negative.
Noresharski.com publishes the text of the entire letter:
Open Letter To Mr. Sergei Stanishev
President of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and of the Party of European Socialists (PES)
Dear Mr. Stanishev,
We address you with regard to your interview from November 10th, 2013 for the TV show “Vsyaka nedelya” on Nova TV – a Bulgarian private television with national coverage. We address you in your capacity both of a politician and a historian. In this interview you expressed the opinion that student protests have played a negative role at key moments of the most recent history of the country since 1989. You said: “What I see are phases from the pasts, and they have not brought any positive developments for the country. After the first student occupation came the government of the Union of democratic forces and the “partitioning” of Bulgaria’s agriculture. And after 1997 – after the second wave of student protests, came the underprice privatization of state owned enterprises.”
We hereby express our firm position that, in our opinion, such statements depart seriously from the truth and are manipulative both from a historical and from a political point of view. The first seven years of the post-totalitarian development of our country were compromised mainly due to the seriously misguided policies of the party you are currently leading. This party brought the country twice to financial collapse, which erased the hopes and the savings of generations of Bulgarian citizens, with the terms “Lukanov’s winter” and “Videnov’s winter” becoming synonymous for irresponsible and predatory politics. Already two times the student protests have helped our country correct these mistakes and bring it back on the path of democratic and pro-European development. In the same way, today the „Early Rising Students“ (Ranobudnite studenti, the organization of the protesting students in 2013) point at deep problems underlying the government of the country: the illegitimate links of the government with corporate groups, the mimicking of socially-oriented policies, the incitement of hatred within our society, the cooperation of the ruling parties with compromised, xenophobic parties.
Your unwillingness to acknowledge the positive role played by Bulgarian student protests in our country’s development after 1989, as well as your unwillingness to take a firm stand with respect to radical nationalist parties such as “Ataka” with its xenophobic rhetoric, confirm once again our doubt in the capacity of both your party and yourself to conduct responsible, pro-European policies in the interest of our society. These are two further grounds for us to reconfirm our firm stand behind the demands of the Early Rising Students for resignation of the government of Mr. Oresharski, supported by your party, and for the calling of early parliamentary elections.
November 10, 2013
University lecturers in support of the protesting student (list of names)
