site.btaGovernment Turns Down Socialists' Request for Be Granted Right of Use to Bouzloudja Monument

Sofia, July 12 (BTA) - The Council of Ministers Wednesday voted, 12-7, to reject a request of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) to transfer to it gratuitously a right to use a communist-era monument at Bouzloudja Peak for a period of ten years, the Government Information Service said on Wednesday.

The motion was moved at the regular Cabinet meeting by Regional Development and Public Works Minister Nikolai Nankov.

The BSP did not take timely steps to finalize a procedure under a Council of Ministers decision of 2011 which transferred the property gratuitously to the party. Amendments to the State Ownership Act, which entered into force in February 2017, made it impossible to implement the 2011 decision.

"We won't give up, we're starting consultations with lawyers to seek an alternative way, possibly through the courts, for us in the BSP to save the monument, once the State doesn't want to do it," BSP leader Kornelia Ninova commented on Facebook.

She notes that granting a right of use is not unlawful. "The Minister himself [Nankov] offered it to us, by virtue of the effective law. Nor is it State aid, because we signed a declaration that we don't want any money from the State budget. The Council of Ministers decision is an expression of a couldn't-care-less attitude to crumbling Bulgaria," Ninova points out, describing further the decision as "fear of a party that can set an example of genuine rather than sham patriotism".

"Bouzloudja and hundreds of other monuments to the war dead, monuments to revolutionary and Bulgarian heroes are abandoned and crumbling. That's how our history and memory are obliterated," the Socialist leader writes.

The monument went under construction in 1974 and was unveiled in 1981. It commemorates the constituent congress that the forerunner of the then dominant Bulgarian Communist Party held nearby in 1891. The concrete structure, resembling a flying saucer sitting atop the 1,441 m Bouzloudja Peak in the Central Balkan Range, consists of a rotunda (42 m across and 14.5 m high) and a 70 m high double pylon surmounted by two five-pointed stars, sized 6.50 by 12 m. The monument was lavishly decorated with 550 sq m of mosaics, bronze sculptures and crystal glass, done by more than 60 artists, glorifying the party and its struggles and achievements and peaceful labour under socialism. After the fall of the communist regime in 1989, the memorial was abandoned, vandalized, and left to crumble.