site.btaNorth Macedonia's Energy Minister: I Didn't Sign Declaration Saying I Have Bulgarian Identity, Bulgarian Lawyers Did It

"Not a single citizen of [North] Macedonia has signed a declaration that they feel Bulgarian, this is done by Bulgarian lawyers who are paid to mediate, North Macedonia's Energy Minister Sanja Bozhinovska wrote on her Facebook account on Friday.

Her post is on the occasion of the words of Bulgarian Vice President Iliana Iotova that she had personally seen a declaration signed by Bozhinovska in which she states that she has Bulgarian identity and origin.

According to Bozhinovska, "Ms Iotova lives in a fantasy world of the 19th century", and the people in North Macedonia who have applied for Bulgarian passports like her do so "for one reason - economic necessity to work outside [North] Macedonia".

"If Ms Iotova thinks that the fraud with the documents introduced by the Bulgarian state will change my feeling of being a Macedonian and the feeling of many of my fellow citizens, she either does not understand that their policy of subterfuge has failed or that we had an economic necessity and she and politicians like her have left them to fantasize as if they were in the nineteenth century. Instead of petty police subterfuge, Ms Iotova should start addressing the need of the Macedonians in Bulgaria to finally be recognized as a minority and to be provided with basic human rights", Bozhinovska wrote. 

The fact that Sanja Bozhinovska has Bulgarian citizenship she herself admitted in the beginning of July after this information was spread in the media in North Macedonia. In the statements Bozhinovska gave then, she claimed that she had renounced her Bulgarian citizenship.

A few months later, the issue was raised again after Bozhinovska was asked at a press conference about the first hundred days of the VMRO-DMNE government whether she still had Bulgarian citizenship and whether she could present a document that she was not a Bulgarian citizen, and she replied that she would ask her lawyers who were dealing with this procedure and would inform the media.