site.btaPresident Radev: After Years of Division, Bulgarian Society Will Realize the Need of Unity

104 POLITICS - PRESIDENT - ADDRESS

President Radev: After Years of Division,
Bulgarian Society Will Realize the
Need of Unity


Sofia, September 29 (BTA) - In a public address broadcast on Bulgarian National Television and the Bulgarian National Radio on Friday evening, President Rumen Radev expressed his belief that after years of division the Bulgarian society will ever more realize the need of unity. In his words, this will be a long process, it will encounter the resistance of forces that feed on division, but he is convinced that wisdom will prevail.

The head of State's address was on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the Soldiers' Uprising.

"On September 29, 1918, the front-line soldiers involved in the uprising clash with the pro-government units near Vladaya and Knyazhevo. The former have fought for Bulgaria on the frontline during World War I and rise in rebellion with the demand for a just republic. The latter go to battle with the conviction that they are protecting Bulgarian statehood from a soldiers' uprising," Radev recalled in his address. "Both sides believe they are sacrificing their lives for their motherland. The uprising is drowned in blood," he went on to say, adding that this was the time of the biggest Bulgarian disunity. "It is marked by fratricide, terror and waste of national energy. The great ideals are buried under dead-end disputes. They also determine today's political debate in which party, lobbyist and personal gains cover the horizon of the national interest," Radev argued.

The President expressed the conviction that millions of Bulgarians realize the need of unity and the wrongness of inherited public divisions being used for topical political business, instead of being overcome. In his words, it is naive to expect a hundred-year disunity to end today or in the near future, but its moral and intellectual overcoming is the only path to success.

Radev also said that unity does not put an end to political debate but ensures it will be held in the name of the national interest, with respect towards the other's opinion and freedom of speech. Unity is a fight for lawfulness and justice on which society can rely; it cannot happen under the banner of any ideology, solely under the mark of culture and philanthropy, he added.

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