Syndicates demonstrated in Sofia

Yesterday, KNSB, the Bulgarian Association of free trade unions organised mass protests in the center of Sofia. The formal demands, as I understand from KNSBs website, was increased salaries for public employees.

The protests were huge by Bulgarian measures, 10 000 according to Darik, and an (un)educated guess is that there is a growing discontent in the working classes, due to the economical crisis that is starting to hurt also in Bulgaria by now. Another even less educated guess is that there are only two weeks until the parliamentary elections, and the trade unionists want to make themselves seen by whoever wins.

They are also not alone in the streets. Today hobby fishermen demonstrated, they want more influence over the legislation regarding fishing. Tomorrow other groups with an interest in using Bulgarian nature are to demonstrate. Natural allies to zelenite I would say...

What's political?

The personal is political. In the sixties the (american) left redefined what politics are - in the timespan between 1964 and 1974 being black, being a woman, being an american indian became political. Identity politics were born. The left might have faded, but identity politics have remained. How many of us who cheered for Obama know, or even care, what concrete matters he plans to use against the financial crisis? We gladly forgive him for continuing all George Bush's wars, we forgive him because he looks like one of us, because he is saying the words we want to hear - Yes We Can!

What can we? Doesn't matter! We can, we are young, we drink Starbucks coffe and we use Twitter! We want a president who uses Blackberry!

I am an everyday Linux user, who compensate lack of knowledge with passion for the potential impact of free software. As a member of the Linx User Grup Bulgaria's mailing list I got an interesting mail a few days before the EU elections. Bogomil Shopov, the prominent blogger who candidated to the EU elections for Zelenite, asked the group members to support his campaign. As the mailing list is usually about some concrete network management problem, I was more than pleased to read something that actually interested me.

Bogo is also a very prominent figure in the Bulgarian Open Source community. I would guess that zelenite is one of the biggest parties in this community, but within a few hours I got another mail, from a user who politely pointed out that zelenite are very nice, but the Linux User List was not the place for political propaganda.

Which raised the question: What is political? Is Linux political?

On the one hand it is. I think almost any Linux user will try to convince you that the world would be a better place if official institutions applied open source solutions. On the other hand - while you find few Socialdemocrats in the open source community, you do find some. You find even more from the far left, libertarian rights or greens. So whatever is political about Linux doesn't separate thinkers of contrasting ideologies... Just like you will find all political convictions represented in any minority community.

To separate the political from the non-political is an outmost delicate matter. Identities, like being black, are political. Choices, like using Linux, are political. Identity, and values are highly political. But they only might, or might not turn into politics...

To maintain an un-political sphere of life, without falling into apathy, is maybe the greatest challenge of democracy.

Why I voted green

In the elections I, like many other Swedish citizens, voted for the Swedish green party. Inspired by Neyioten blog, where I could read both why Svetle would not vote for zelenite, and why she would vote for Sinjata Koalitia, I will try to explain why.

I am brought up in a tradition of democratic socialism. Most of my life it has been an obvious choice to vote for left leaning parties, but I have lately come to doubt that left wings politics (eternal growth + solidarity) are possible at all. The decline of parties like UK Labour and the continuous lack of innovative left wing thinking has made me lose hope in the ledt. And there is globalisation... Left wing politics require regulations, and how do you regulate production in China? Or Africa.

So why not face the facts and vote for liberals or center right? Because I neither belive in any eternal growth. The oil will finish one day. Maybe next year, maybe after fifty. But if there is oil for fifty more years, oil- and car companies will make us live fifty more years as if it would last for ever. Liberals and center politicians are way to weak when it comes to defending nature against private exploitation.

There are other issues as well. Like deregulating healthcare and schools, and then expect them to run as if the state payed them. It is difficult to make money from teaching. Private schools work excellent when they can pick their pupils, christian, muslims, ultra-rich... but they are completely useless in granting things like citizen's right to education. I might be wrong, but the only thing I have personally seen from deregulations is that the state pays the expenses for morally dubious enterprises. Deragulation can not be the answer to everything. But it's the only answer I get from Europe's center and liberal politicians.

So... I voted green. Because I hope they can work for a policy that finally take into account that we live on a planet. Ihope also that they can drive a development towards a much more local society, where we consume things hat have been produced locally to a much higher degree than today...

It will of course be a challenge to blog from my localy produced computer, but anyway... :) My reflections in this blog refer to European politics in general, or Swedish. I was not eligible for choosing between Bulgarian parties, and I am aware that my choice might, or might not have looked different is i was.

Congrats, zelenite!

If these elections had been about European questions, all Bulgarian parties could be pleased with the results:

Zelenite didn't make it to Brussels, but got around 1%. Not bad for the first time. The Greens did a wonderful election in Europe, and have better representation than before. There are more opportunties for green politics in the European parliament than ever.

The blue coalition did a good election,

and GERB won decisively. They both participate in the European people's party group, that wond decisively over the socialists.

DPS, the Turkish minority party defended themselves well. In the EU parliament the belong to the same liberal group as NDSV, whose Meglena Kuneva made an excellent personal campaign.

The Bulgarian socialists held their stance better than most comrades in Europe, though. Much better than Gordon Brown, for example.

In addition to this EPP have claimed that they want to create a "big coalition" together with the liberals and the socialists, to deny the far right, green and far left groups any influence.

Lider, another populist party made a surpirsingly good election and are surely happy about that.


Ataka woud rejoice, not only about their own position as nr. 3 in Bulgaria, but over the much larger far right group in the EU parliament. And they will get at least as much money from the EU parliament as UK's BNP gets.



Not so... In Bulgaria, as everywhere else in Europe, the EU elections are nothing but a final rehersal ahead of the real, national elections. Quite rightly so, as the commission, representin the national governments still holds gar more power than the EU parliament.

I don't think anyone reard themselves as winners in Bulgaria yet. It's pretty much like in the pause between second and third period in ice hockey...

There have been claims about votes being bought and sold. The blue coalition and Lider wants the votes to be recounted.(I will not comment anything on this on this blog before anyone is sentenced, since it is a very serious allegation.)

Gerb is leading... but from here it can only go downwards.
The Socialists now know that they are weaker than Gerb. Time is running out for hanging that.
DPS might be able to produce a similar result in the national elections. But if the Socialists don't form the next government they are toast.
Zelenite.. I don't know what they think about the result yet. But the chance to enter the parliament in these elections look small.
If these results were national, the Blue Coalition might well govern with Gerb. I would not send Bojko Borisov to in meetings Europe. Martin Dimitrov has a much more European and delicate image that wouldn't cause any scandals in Brussels. But if the blue coalition wants to influence Gerbs poltics, they will wnat to take as many voters as possible - compared to Gerb.
Lider and NDSV must bet on a coalition with someone, but with whom?

I guess Ataka has the least to worry about. They are not allied with any one, and might end up with 10-15% in opposition. A dream position for right wing populists.

In the end - in politics everything can and will happen. Less than 50% voted in these elections, so there is plenty of room for surprises.

ZES - sagan fortsätter

The battle over ZES, the law that would give the ministry of interior direct acces to ISP's data is not over yet. The ministry will forward the law proposal again, but this time the documents will be marked "Secret". How the parliament is to discuss a secret law proposal is still to be seen...

Source: Bulgaria e nasha

Romania...

I was invited by my friend/blogging colleague Maria Nenova to participate in a Blog game of associations. The theme is to think about countries, and Maria asked me to write about what I associate with Romania. Thanks for the opportunity, Maria!

One of the things that has changed most in the last three years in my life, except for meeting the love of it, is my perception of Romania. In Sweden, Romania meant post-communist and poverty. I remember maltreated orphans, and the mineriads. It was all very strange to me. But Romania been strange alos to people older than me.

While Bulgaria's Todor Jivkov still doesn't strike me as anything more than a boring man in a suite, like Honnecker or Breznjev, Ceaucescu was this kind of thrilling third world dictator.The kind of dictator you meet ine Garcia Marquez's and Vargas Llosa's novels. His wife with a million pair of shoes, his faraonic building projects, his megalomania and his horrible end, shot like a dog and broadcasted around the world. It was all so terrifying and fascinating.

Then I went to Moldova, and over a night, Romania became the symbol of Europe. I think Bulgarians also remember this night, the new years night between 2006 and 2007 when Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU. I celebrated it in Moldova, with a family where about half of the members had Romanian passports. They were dancing and singing right out in the air: "We are in Europe!" "We are in Europe!". The other half were much less agitated. For them this new year marked the first when they needed a visa even to go to Bucharest, or to the closer Iasi.

In Moldova I learned Romanian, and I still flirt with it. I like to play with the diftongues and pronounce slightly outdated words from Mercia Eliade's novels. I was working at a voluntary project that was closed most of the time, so I had plenty of time to learn. I wanted to also study Russian, but I didn't manage. It's a pity really... I don't think you can fully appreciate Moldova without knowing both Russian and Romanian.

In the spring I had, like all foreigners in Moldova have, some problems with my permission to stay. The deal was that I had to leave the country for Iasi, stay in Romania 24 hours and then return. I was madly in love at the time. I left Moldova with my Bulgarian girlfriend as she had made her first visit there. These 24 hours in Iasi were a fantastic adventure. There were lowers everywhere. A much more relaxed atmosphere than in Chisinau. It's a student's city so there were bookstores and cafes everwhere... so much of everything. And it was all in Romanian!

I had actually decided to stay in Romania, but eventually I didn't. I returned to Moldova to finish my project. Since then, crossing the border between Moldova and Romania always made me feel a little, just a little, bit more at home.

I went to Bulgaria, and to be frank I think my Bulgarian is better than my Romanian by now. A Bulgarian passport is as good as a Romanian or a Swedish, so the glory around Romania has somehow faded. But still... Romania has a place in my heart :)

I don't want the game to die with me, so I pass the ball to Svetla Encheva, author of the Neyioten blog. I would like to read Svetla's thoughts about Moldova.

And I will try to take athe game abroad, and ask two Swedish bloggers, I want to ask my friend Jimmy what he thinks about France, and the profilic left wing blog Svensson that I follow with interest how he percieves Russia

Remembering 1989

Today, 20 years ago hundreds, maybe thousands of people had just been killed on the Tiananmen square in Beijing. The Chinese Communist party violently, and strikingly succesfully crushed the students' opposition, and has ever since managed to keep the population quiet with a break neck economic development that makes so many Chinese richer that few remembers those who get poorer.

From an European perspective two questions arise - How did the Chinese regime not fall when all other Communist regimes, save Cuba, Vietnam and North Korea, did? And how comes that today, 20 years after Tiananmen, China is financing the anglosaxon consumer economy? Observers anxiously look to China for the "green shots" that will take us back to yesterday.



(Picture form the protests in Beijing 1989. Creative Commons lincense, found on flickr. Photo by cromacom)





Eastern Europe on the other hand, where the wall fell and poets like Vaclav Havel became presidents, is a sad story these days. Romania gets money from the IMF. Latvia is about to collapse. Lech Walesa has fallen from grace... The Czech president scares West European left and right alike with his neoliberal anti-environmentalism.

Bulgaria is going towards European and parlimentary elections. Not without a few scandals, but it's still way more of a democracy than the richest and happiest Chinese can hope for. Still it's not uncommon to hear from the opposition that ""20 godini ni stigat!", "20 years is enough!" In spite of efforts from the socially minded intelligentsia to remember 1989, like the Goat milk festival, it is not any huge celebration going on here. Most people I speak with are more likely to remind me about 20 years of corruption than about 20 years of freedom...

From where does it come, this feeling that nothing, or almost nothing has changed in the last 20 years in Bulgaria? At the same time China, ruled by the same party and the same people as 30 years ago, have an international influence Sweden, the UK or even the EU could only dream of.

I don't know anything about China. The only thing that I know for sure, is that also there a new generation must have grown up, a generation that doesn't remember the time before 1989. How do they see China 20 years from now?

I don't know much about Bulgaria either, to be frank. But I do belive many Bulgarians underestimate what has happened here during the last 20 years. Could anyone imagine me sitting here writing this 1988? Or 1995?

Today is a day for remembering all those that died in the Tiananmen square. They died for freedom. It is a time to be grateful for the freedom we have, and keep on working for it. The thing about freedom is that you must fight for it every day, over and over again.



Photo by Grant Neufeld. Taken from Creative Commons
*

The inernet is of course crowded with stories about Tiananmen today. I liked this audioclip with Nikolas Kristof on the New York Times' site.

Hungarian cop's go ultra-right wing

The Hungarian trade union Tettrekesz, organizing policemen, have signed a statement of collaboration with the exreme right wing party Jobbik, known for antisemitism, antiroma activities and general fascism.

Jobbik are likely to get four seats in the Euopean parliament. In exchange for the fourth position on the party's list, and possibly one of these seats, for Tettrekesz chairman Judit Szima, the trade union declare their support for the party's politics in "police matters". Fascists tend to regard most things as police matters...

Higher authorities are not so pleased, and have kindly asked the trade union to refrain from the competition.

The news reached me through the Romanian paper/site Cotidianul, which of course loves to find scandals in Bulgaria or evenmore in Hungary.