BULGARIA'S OLD GUARD GETS UGLY

For those familiar with the tactics of the hard line communists of the past any threat to their sense of privilege or exposure of their abuses of power was met with a vicious whispering campaign of lies against their accusers.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party, formerly known as the Bulgarian Communist Party, has learned how to be nasty by following the example of those who pulled its strings from Moscow for decades. Even though it is presently out of power, it is up to its old tricks. Here is how it operates. A Party figure feeds media outlets in Bulgaria, or other EU member nations, scandalous stories to damage the reputations of those the Party feels are a threat to its power base and to the flow of money it gets from corruption and organized crime. The media outlets run with the stories, thereby giving credence to untruths by printing and circulating them. Before long, those untruths are repeated over and over in the Bulgarian media, with variations of them fed to foreign press and political outlets. Before long, the lies become accepted wisdom.
The tactic is a ploy intelligence agencies use in psychological warfare and it is highly effective in discrediting an enemy. Sometimes, disinformation is placed outside a country from where it originates so that, by the time, it flows back to the host country, the source is difficult to track and the disinformation suddenly acquires credibility by its widespread circulation.
Bulgaria’s Foreign Minister, Mrs. Rumiana Jeleva is the target of such a campaign with its roots in Bulgaria but with manifestations in Germany. She represents what is new and promising about a Bulgaria that too often has been burdened with an international image of a state corrupt from top to bottom with a heavily compromised judiciary. She has made it clear she will not tolerate organized crime or the types of corruption that have caused havoc in her nation’s body politic. As someone, who has written about Bulgaria, and who has a history of reporting on European matters, I have been aware for a long time that the European Commission has been deeply concerned that Bulgaria lacks the political will to stamp out corruption. Like Mrs. Jeleva, there are those in Brussels who know that the communists who ran Bulgaria during the Cold War did not run away when Bulgaria found democracy. Instead, they branded themselves socialists, grabbed everything they could lay their hands on and have been grabbing ever since. They have shown no appetite for reforming the country into a modern democracy by combating corruption and organized crime.
If one takes a good look at many of the Bulgarian power brokers, who represent the tired politics of the communist Old Guard, one does not have to look far. Top of my agenda would be the present European Commissioner, Mrs. Miglena Kuneva, the daughter-in-law of a former member of the Central committee of the BCP – Bulgarian Communist Party. It is a fact that since the advent of the democratic changes, the people in power have been the children or grandchildren of the former communist elite but not so Mrs. Jeleva. She made her own way in life, gaining a PhD. in Sociology in Germany on the road to becoming a politician, without ever being the recipient of BCP nepotism.
When she became Foreign Minister she showed she was ready to confront corruption in her foreign ministry sector. She removed ambassadors from their posts for abusing their power and sacked corrupt ministry officials. Her efforts were applauded outside Bulgaria and she made a big impression on U.S. Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton, who invited her to Washington. German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, personally supported her candidacy for the vice-presidency of the European Folk Party and she was warmly received by the French President, Nicholas Sarkozy, and by the Pope. Judged by the standards of any other nation, Mrs. Jeleva would have been regarded as a successful advocate for Bulgaria abroad but her success was perceived as a major threat the moment it was clear she was in line to replace the present European Commissioner, Mrs. Kuneva. By all accounts, Mrs. Kuneva was angry when told she would not be reappointed and the news did not sit well with her communist associates at home and abroad.
Almost immediately, a Psyops – psychological operations - campaign was launched against Mrs. Jeleva, beginning with attempts to discredit her and ruin her reputation in Bulgaria and other E.U. countries. The aim was to frighten the European Commission due to rule on her candidacy to succeed Mrs. Kuneva on January 15, 2010. Bulgarian socialists, whom everyone knows are former communists of old, feared Mrs. Jeleva might use the position of Commissioner in Brussels to wage a campaign for greater transparency in her own country and thereby become a cause célèbre for those seeking to end corruption and organized crime in Bulgaria.
Mrs. Jeleva’s enemies began with a vicious, whispering campaign in the Bulgaria media, which too often thrives on conspiracy theories and lacks the journalistic integrity to analyze the information it is fed. Before long, the campaign got really ugly. When her enemies could find nothing to discredit her, they encouraged German media outlets to focus on her husband, accusing him, without any foundation of truth, of being a Mafioso. That generated German headlines such as “Gangster Bride for the E.U. Commission.” The German newspaper, Die Welt, relied on what I like to refer to as the undergraduate school of journalism tactic of repeating unfounded accusations with the phrase “it is rumored that.” A Die Welt journalist employed the phrase several times when regurgitating nasty innuendos about Mrs. Jeleva and her husband, who happens to work in a bank and takes the bus to work every day.
Two weeks before the Die Welt article appeared, Daniel Cohen Bendit, once known as “Danny the Red,” as well as a host of other nicknames to indicate his revolutionary credentials as a young man, publicly stated at a Greens Party meeting in Germany that he expected Jeleva to be questioned by the Commission regarding rumors circulating about her and her husband. Bendit should know all about the rumor factory since he was often its target throughout his political career in France and Germany. Still, the fact he made mention of the lies being circulated showed how far those lies had spread and the impact they were having.
It is not difficult to trace a psychological warfare campaign to its source. All one has to do is to look at those who benefit from it. In Bulgaria, they are the ones who care more about maintaining the status quo and furthering corruption. The attacks on Mrs. Jeleva should also be seen in the context of a serious attempt to undermine Bulgaria’s ruling government, which is the first government to truly display a determination to fight corruption and organized c rime.
As a journalist and author, I have never encouraged people to sue publications but the Die Welt material is an egregious example of a newspaper allowing itself to be used to further a campaign of vicious lies to discredit a genuinely thoughtful politician. I hope Mrs. Jeleva sues the socks off them as they say in New York where I now life. If I were Bulgarian, I would be incensed by this attempt to discredit the nation’s Foreign Minister abroad because it is having the effect of holding Bulgaria up to ridicule. Bulgarian journalists should ferret out those in the shadows who have targeted Mrs. Jeleva. If they succeed, who knows what else they will uncover.