Bulgaria: Mother tongue use in campaigns remains prohibited

An opposition party in Bulgaria decided to withdraw its draft amendment aiming to abolish the obligatory use of Bulgarian language in the country’s political activities.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party said in a statement Tuesday that it will withdraw the draft amendment proposing changes on the election law, which prohibits the use of mother tongue for minorities in election campaigns.

It is estimated that Turks constitute about 9 percent of Bulgaria’s population of more than 7 million. Romani are the second biggest minority in the country.

The statement said that the changes proposed by MP Georgi Kadiev had been discussed in a party parliamentary group meeting. Thirty MPs out of 31 participating the meeting requested that the draft amendment be withdrawn.

In his draft amendment, Kadiev had proposed last week that Bulgarian minorities be allowed to speak in their mother tongue during election campaigns on the condition a translation in Bulgarian be provided.

Following the meeting, Kadiev said that some MPs had proposed his expulsion from the party’s parliamentary group.

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, of which most of the members belong to Bulgaria’s Turkish minority, is the only party in the Bulgarian Parliament that insists on the right to use the mother tongue in the upcoming campaign for local elections to be held in autumn.

The party leader Lutvi Mestan was fined 11 times in 2014 for speaking Turkish in 2014 during the Bulgarian general election campaign.

Mestan had previously said that the Kadiev’s proposed draft amendment was a “promising light in the tunnel where the language of hate is spoken”.

All minorities, Turkish, Roman, Russian, Armenian etc., are estimated to constitute more than 15 percent of the country’s population, according to a 2011 census.

Bulgaria is a NATO member since 2004 and a European Union member since 2007.  
   www.aa.com.tr
   3/6/15