site.btaCultural Policy Should Not Be Mixed with Party Politics - Culture Minister Todorov

"Cultural policy and party politics should not be mixed. As recent years have shown, partisan passions have become a chasm in relations between people," caretaker Culture Minister Nayden Todorov said in a statement sent by the Culture Ministry to BTA. The position came in response to Wednesday's decision of the caretaker cabinet to propose to President Rumen Radev to award Bulgaria's highest distinction, the Order of the Balkan Range, First Class, to Georgi Yordanov for his great services to culture and art. Yordanov, who turned 90 in May, was a prominent functionary of the Bulgarian Communist Party. He was MP between 1971 and 1990, chairman of the Committee on Culture, and minister of culture, science and education. The proposal caused tension in Parliament earlier in the day. 

According to Todorov, the role of culture is to unite, while politics focuses on the differences between people, culture seeks the common grounds.

"The Culture Minister has no right to propose anything at his own discretion. He abides by the decisions of committees that consider the proposals of initiative committees. Failure to comply with these decisions would be an illegal act on the part of the Minister. And the list of the initiating committee for awarding Georgi Yordanov includes unquestionable names from the cultural sector, with different political convictions, but apparently having found a reason to unite them in nominating his name for the award," the position paper said.

"The proposal for Georgi Yordanov is not mine. I am submitting the proposal in my capacity as Minister of Culture, but it is a proposal of an initiative committee of the Ministry of Culture. This is the procedure, and accordingly there is a committee that decides whether this should go to the Council of Ministers," Todorov said at Thursday's meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Culture and Media. He added that the initiative committee includes many public figures, including the permanent representative of Bulgaria to the UN, the presidents and executives of the Union of Artists in Bulgaria, the Union of Bulgarian Journalists, the Union of Bulgarian Writers, the Union of Bulgarian Actors, the Union of Bulgarian Composers, the president of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, among other intellectuals. 

He gave the example of Austrian conductor Herbert von Karajan, who was a member of the Nazi party and in 1945 was banned from conducting. "After a three-year study by an American commission, this ban fell on him because, although he was a member of that party, his only true conviction was music," Todorov said.