site.btaFormer Movement for Rights and Freedoms Leader Mestan Vows to Stay in Politics, Reveals No Specific Plans

Former Movement for Rights and Freedoms
Leader Mestan Vows to Stay in Politics,
Reveals No Specific Plans


Sofia, January 7 (BTA) - Speaking to the press Wednesday at what was his first news conference since his ouster from the chairmanship of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) a day before Christmas 2015, Lyutvi Mestan said that he is not intimidated by the way he was treated and is determined to remain in politics. He would not answer questions by the press about his specific political plans and said the future depends on ongoing talks with his electorate.

Mestan's ouster followed a pre-Christmas party speech of MRF's honorary chairman and former long-serving leader Ahmed Dogan in which he slammed his successor for working to bring Bulgaria too close to Turkey and for a declaration in behalf of the party in support of Ankara amid the row over the downing of a Russian bomber aircraft in November.

Mestan repeated his position that the declaration was not a blunder, was not his personal project, was supported by the whole MRF group but not coordinated with the honorary chairman, Ahmed Dogan, despite the practice of coordinating most important issues with him, in Mestan's own words.

Mestan said that his policy as chairman of MRF was "to try to shed MRF's image as a pro-Russian oligarchic party and put it on a stable position in the field of Euro-Atlantic ideas and values".

"The Bulgarian national interest is not in Russia: it is in the EU and NATO," said Mestan. He argued that the changes in the geo-political environment do not justify a pessimism in the Bulgarian society about its future in the EU and the adequacy of NATO. "Quite the opposite: it is yet another argument for enhancing Euro-Atlanticism."

"Around Christmas, I stepped on a Russian mine and you know what happened next," said Mestan.

He also said that the attitude to Turkey in Bulgarian politics "shows a lack of strategic depth".

He appeared to be referencing Ahmed Davutoglu's book "Strategic Depth".

He complained of a smear campaign against himself in some media outlets following his ouster and said he will sure them for slanderous reports which alleged that he owned power plants, a restaurant chain and farms, and called him a traitor, a swindler, a womanizer and an Islamist.

He called his ouster "a ritual political execution on a par with some of the best examples of Stalinism and totalitarianism, without the right to last word".

Mestan was not allowed to attend the meeting of the MRF leadership which made the decision about his dethroning.

"It has become clear that the MRF is structured in a way that makes it impossible for it to have a leader other than Ahmed Dogan and this is the worst problem for the future functioning of this party," he said.

Of his much-talked-about visit to the Turkish Embassy in Sofia on the day prior to his ouster, he said that he had a meeting arranged with the Ambassador for the same night to discuss an upcoming visit but then he was told "through an intermediary" that he must step down, had his bodyguards recalled when he refused to do that and chose to spend a few hours at the Embassy before he made arrangements to spend a couple of days outside Sofia out of security concerns: for himself and his family.

He said that not even President Rosen Plevneliev was aware that his bodyguards were recalled - which reportedly transpired when Mestan called the President - even though the National Bodyguard Service reports to the President.

He would not name the intermediary who asked him to come down in a telephone conversation, saying only "I rely on your intelligence to guess who he was" which is believed to have meant that it was Delyan Peevski.

Asked by the press to assess the clout that MP Delyan Peevski has in MRF and in decision-making in this country, Mestan called it "considerable".

Mestan catalogued decisions he has made which make him proud of his own political career: for pulling out the support for the government of Plamen Oresharski, for ending the Sough Stream gas pipeline project, for the position on the Ukrainian crisis, for the declaration on the assassination of Boris Nemtsov, for the systematic attempts to restore dialogue with the Right wing and for restoring dialogue with Ankara.

The former MRF leader said he would not follow calls, including from the MRF youth chapter, to leave Parliament.

Mestan's news conference of nearly two hours drew impressive media coverage and was attended by a huge crowd of reporters who had to compete for the limited time to ask their questions and often raised their voice and interrupted each other.

Mestan was accompanied by his wife Shirin, MPs Hyusein Hafuzov, Aydogan Ali and Mariana Georgieva, as well as the former local MRF leader in Kurdjali Bahri Umer. VI/PK/LN/
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