Men ikke alle muslimer i Bulgarien er glade for at gå sammen med dem der
forfulgte dem i kommunismetiden, - AHW kan sikkert afvise forfølgelserne som
rent vås.
Muslim Party Key Player in Bulgaria's Election
GOTZE DELCHEV, Bulgaria, June 22, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - A
party representing the Muslim minority in Bulgaria would join a coalition
with the Socialists after the June 25 elections, dealing a death blow to the
ruling center-right party.
"We will participate in the next government. We will most probably ally
ourselves with the left," Ahmed Dogan, the leader of the Movement for Rights
and Freedoms (MRF), told Agence France Presse (AFP) Wednesday, June 22.
"Due to the European Union funds to be absorbed by the next government, it
will have the most resources since the time of communism," he said,
asserting these should be used to raise Bulgarians' standard of living.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) seems set to win most votes in the
national elections, but not the enough majority to govern alone.
Opinion polls give the BSP 36 to 45 percent of the vote, compared to 24 for
the ruling National Movement (NMSII) and 10 percent each for the MRF and the
right-wing Union of Democratic Forces (UDF).
"We count on having 25 to 30 deputies in the next 240-seat parliament,"
Dogan said during a campaign rally in the predominantly Muslim southern town
of Gotze Delchev.
The MRF joined the government in 2001 for the first time after winning 20
seats in the elections that year.
It has two ministers, seven deputy ministers and three regional governors.
In the last municipal elections in 2003, the party won 10 percent of the
vote -- the same result scored by the NMSII.
The MRF was created during the communist rule in Bulgaria in response to the
regime's brutal assimilation campaign against the Muslim minority in the
country.
It commands support from the 800,000-strong ethnic Turk community in
Bulgaria as well as from the so-called Pomacs -- Slavs who embraced Islam
during the Ottoman rule -- and a small group of Muslim Gypsies.
Support for the MRF is strongest in the tobacco-growing southern regions
around Kurdzhali and in the northeastern town of Razgrad, with its high
Turkish population.
Controversial Alliance
The BSP, the reformed and renamed communist party that ruled Bulgaria for 45
years, said a coalition with the MRF after the national elections as
"possible".
"Even if we win an absolute majority we will still try to form a broad
coalition in order to be better equipped against the challenges posed by our
accession to the European Union" in 2007, BSP deputy leader Roumen Ovcharov
told AFP.
political analyst Mira Yanova said the BSP "does not speak too openly of a
coalition with the MRF so as not to alienate more nationalist voters,
particularly those who live in the south with its strong Muslim population".
However, the idea of teaming up with the ex-communist party drew anger from
several Bulgarian Muslims.
Fatme, a 53-year-old woman, recalled her ordeal under the communist rule.
She said she was forced to change her name to the Christian Ilka in 1973 as
part of the Communist campaign to destroy a strong Turkish identity.
"For weeks we lit fires in the square to protest. One night the police
stormed the village. I was beaten, my husband spent three days in detention,
and my dad went to jail."
Seated near a memorial for five victims of those same events, an old man who
refused to give his name said he did not want to hear about a government
made up of the MRF and the ex-communists.
"The memory of what they did will be with me until my dying day," he said.
http://islamonline.net/English/News/2005-06/22/article06.shtml