Bulgarian PM Backs Extreme Nationalist on Media Purge
2010-07-30 16:04:35

Bulgaria's PM Boyko Borisov backed leader of nationalist Ataka party Volen Siderov regarding the latter's comments that Bulgarian National Radio and TV should be purged of people related to the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) and the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF).

Wednesday Siderov voiced a public threat to media freedom in Bulgaria by calling the National Radio Horizont program and declaring live on air that “the National Radio will become an objective media when it gets purged of BSP and MRF cadres.”

Siderov also shared his view that since the time of democratic transition in 1989 nothing has changed in the National Radio and that it is high time that this change happened. The nationalist leader promised that will come to pass with the adoption of the new law on radio and television in Bulgaria.

The incident happened during a radio show discussing whether there is police violence in Bulgaria, on the occasion of controversy that flared around a recent police operation in the town of Kardzhali.

Thursday journalists from the Bulgarian National Radio came out with a declaration expressing outrage at Siderov's statements, calling them “a dark revelation” in support of “political censorship.”

Friday the Union of Bulgarian Journalists came out with a similar declaration, calling Siderov's words “unacceptable” and saying: “This horrendous statement which returns us to a very dark period of history enters into a drastic contradiction with the declared intention that there is no political assignment for the future law on media”.

Friday, when asked whether he would denounce Siderov's statements, Borisov, rather than doing that, said that based on what he is aware of, the journalist Siderov talked to Wednesday was politically hired in the National Radio based on influence of the Bulgarian Socialist Party.

The journalist in question, Diana Yankulova, worked as head of the PR department of the Ministry of Interior when BSP's Mihail Mikov was minister (2008-9), after which she returned to her prior position in the National Radio.

Friday PM Borisov called that a case of "political hiring" and "conflict of interests."

The Bulgarian Prime Minister also shared personal woes he has had: "I too have been the victim of similar activities on the part of other journalists and I know that one can react very emotionally, especially when one knows whose interests they are servicing."

Borisov's GERB cabinet has a minority support in Parliament of 117 MPs out of 240 and has relied on support from nationalists Ataka (21 MPs) and mainstream rightists Blue Coalition (14 MPs). Recently the Blue Coalition has voiced various criticisms of the GERB government, while Ataka has generally remained a loyal partner and supporter.

Among other things, Ataka is well known, especially in the earlier years after its creation in 2005, for expressing and fanning extreme nationalist and xenophobic sentiments and for not shying to use imagery reminiscent of Nazism.

In 1927 Joseph Goebbels, future Nazi Germany Reichsminister of Propaganda, set up a propaganda newspaper called "Den Angriff", which translates to "Attack" or "Ataka" in Bulgarian. That is also the name of the newspaper published by the Ataka party, and of a prior TV show Siderov had on the SKAT TV channel.

In 2007 Siderov published a book intriguingly called "My Struggle for Bulgaria."