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Heimwee Bulgaren socialisme Verite - 16.10.2002 22:01
Er zijn heel wat misvattingen over Oost-Europa. De krant Left Russia geeft een beeld over de invoering van het kapitalisme en hoe de Bulgaren erover denken A generation lost to the market economy in Bulgaria by Vessela Sergueva SOFIA, Oct 1 (AFP) - In Bulgaria a generation of hopeful young professionals backed the country's 1989 conversion to a market economy. But, now aged around 40 to 60, this "lost generation has seen its engineers become grocers and its doctors become taxi drivers, as it plummets down the social scale. Ten years ago, 47-year-old Genoveva Popova was an industrial draughtswoman -- today she sells tiles in a shop belonging to her brother, ! who was once an engineer. "We can manage to feed ourselves, but we no longer have enough money to go on holiday. I wonder why I studied at all," she said, disillusioned. "As a general rule, 40 to 60-year-olds who backed the transition to a market economy have lost their jobs and their position in society," commented Jivko Georgiev, of the Gallup polling institute. "Their savings evaporated and more than a third of them have been unemployed for years. Some of them tried to play the capitalist game by starting small businesses, but most of these failed," he added. A recent study by specialist institute Alpha Research showed that 78 percent of Bulgarians say their position in the social scale has dropped since 1989, and 66 percent believe they are at the bottom of the social ladder. Less than eight percent believe they are in a better social position than they were under communism, a! nd only eight percent believe they have stayed at the same level, according to the study, in which less than two percent of those questioned believed their standard of living was "above average". "It is not poverty so much as the feeling of being over-qualified for one's work, of having fallen from one social status to another, which is painful," said political analyst Kancho Stoichev. Another analyst, Andrei Raichev, said: "Bulgaria's transition from a communist economy to a market economy is complete. The social structure has been established definitively and irreversibly." A crisis in schooling means students have to pay for lessons in English and computing -- the two best tickets to jobs. "That means that the children of the 14 percent of well-off families will make up the next generation of the well-off," explained analyst Kolio Kolev, of the Mediana polling institute. "T! here is a consensus in society on the market economy, the rule of law, and joining NATO. But people are not sure about the methods which are being used to achieve those goals," said Georgiev. Nostalgia for the communist era is becoming stronger and stronger, Alpha Research noted. According to one poll, more than 60 percent of people with low or medium incomes believe that Bulgaria developed better under communist rule, between 1944 and 1989. Among the changes the transition has brought, freedom to travel is most appreciated, with 70 percent pleased with the change, the poll said. It is followed by the end of food shortages (65 percent), the right to do business freely (66 percent), free elections (58 percent) and the restitution of farmlands (14 percent). According to public opinion, the main winners in the last 13 years have been politicians (55 percent), criminals (37 percent) and businessm! en (18 percent), the poll said. Re: A generation lost to the market economy in Bulgaria Dear All, That article is DISGUSTINGLY MANIPULATIVE - as most of the figures quoted! - and full of DAMNED LIES! What makes me especially mad is that repeated assertion that there is consensus re market economy and - N-A-T-O!!!!! If the majority of people are asked about market economy, they will not know what you are talking about. "Market economy" is an abstract term that speaks nothing to them. But if you ask if they like their present life better that the life before 1989, it is quite another thing: they will answer without any hesitation – NO! The PAID author has pointed "more than 60 %" are nostalgic for the “communist era”. What does “more than 60% mean?” - 70? 80? NOTE THE CONTRADICTION between the assertion for “consensus re the market economy” – and the nostalgia for the past figure of “more than 60 %”!!!!!!! THERE IS NO CONSENSUS RE NATO! There is such consensus ONLY among the so-called political parties! But how much percent of the PEOPLE are the DAMNED political parties? 80 % of the people are AGAINST NATO! They want referendum but it is not allowed because, as one of the DAMNED politicians put it, the result will be a BIG GREAT "NO"!!!!!!! All the so-called Agencies for sociological public opinion researches are PAID to publish MANIPULATIVE data and blatantly to manipulate people here and abroad! That article is SHAMELESSLY manipulative - besides some figures that seem acceptable the HIGHLY PAID author distributes a DAMNED heap of lies! Look at the consensus thing! Look at that excerpt: "Among the changes the transition has brought, freedom to travel is most appreciated, with 70 percent pleased with the change, the poll said. It is followed by the end of food shortages (65 percent), the right to do business freely (66 percent), free elections (58 percent) and the restitution of farmlands (14 percent)." Note the CONTRADICTION with the figures quoted above it!!! But let's look more closely at it. freedom to travel I didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry! Freedom of travel – BIG SHAKES! Who travels? Could the hungry travel? Could the unemployed travel? Could the ill travel? Could the beggars travel? Who travels? Only the government and party people - with the taxpayers’ money – our tortured money! Only the economical MAFIA people – with the sweat money squeezed out of the slaves working for them for next to nothing - and with the money stolen from all of us through the neoliberal so-called privatization. Look at the figure and compare it with the other figures quoted in the article – doesn’t the comparison results strike you as, mildly said, funny? Read again the sentence “We can manage to feed ourselves, but we no longer have enough money to go on holiday.” That poor woman means going to holiday in the boundaries of BULGARIA! Her family and she are bound to the town they live – that town has turned into a concentration camp for them: THEY CANNOT LEAVE IT because they are POOR and ! ALL their money are spend on FOOD, electricity, water, and central heating bills! end of food shortages - Besides the years after the WWII at the end of the forties there was ONLY ONE YEAR OF FOOD SHORTAGES, and it was 1991! Why? Because the future businessmen from the Bulgarian Communist Party nomenclature - who SOLD Bulgaria to the US in 1989 and 1990! - hid the food in anticipation of the coming "price liberation". They bought huge quantities of food products at the low prices of the "totalitarian regime" - and then sold them at the New High "Liberated" prices! In this way they turned into very rich people overnight, one can say! (I personally know of a man who bought tons of sugar directly from the Sugar factory in the town of Gorna Orjahoviza, kept them in warehouses, and afterwards sold that quantity at a great profit for himself!) the right to do business freely Which is the date of that "research"? Because it might have been so in the first 4-5 years of the Great Neoliberal Liberation - it means till about 1995. Now it is impossible to get such figures. The people in their majority have already understood that the "free business" is ONLY one more of THEIR MANTRAS! "Free" successful business can do only the politicians and those near and close to them - THE POLITICAL-ECONOMICAL MAFIA OF US SERVANTS THAT IS KILLING BULGARIA FOR YEARS ON A RUN TOGETHER WITH THEIR US MASTERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! A great majority of ORDINARY people who tried to do some "free business" has lost everything and lives the despicable life of the other Bulgarians outside THE MAFIA. free elections - 66 % How is it possible that 66 % rejoice at the so-called "free elections" - and the participants in those" free elections" to be regularly under 50 % for the last several years? Last autumn the current Bulgarian President was elected f.i. with only about 40 % participants in the Presidential elections from all the people with right to take part in elections! Make the conclusion for yourselves! the restitution of farmlands - 14 % That figure seems acceptable. You see quite well THEIR system of manipulation: get out some truths to catch the attention - and then pour out buckets of DIRTY MANIPULATIVE LIES! One should be very suspicious to the official news from the USEC protectorate Bulgaria. As it is already very well known, THEY – THE GLOBO MASTERS - LOVE LIES! And demand THE SAME from THEIR servants. Blagovesta Doncheva Sofia The Balkans |
Read more about: europa | supplements | ![](/images/1pixel.gif) | yesyes | schurmanovski - 17.10.2002 04:40
Though she states some reasonable points in the comment above, this miss Blagovesta Doncheva seems a bit weird to me. A former Bulgarian dissident (don't know about her credits) she writes in some articles that Slobodan Milosevic is 'her hero' and will stay so. What about condemning one sort of maffia, to praise the other maffiosi? Yes, Bulgaria was plundered by the CP-apparatchiks who sold everything to the US and EU, but what about the Milosevic-clan, looting and selling everything from YU with some better profits? Pigs catch a pig and put him in some prison in The Hague, but why should I be bothered? Its the people who should change their own destiny, and forget about the politicians! | |
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