Rogue Generals V2 Reboot: A Different Post-EDSA Uno Philippines TL
Sept 27, 2022 3:42:31 GMT
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Post by TheRomanSlayer on Sept 27, 2022 3:42:31 GMT
OMAKE ONE: COMMEMORATION
MARTIAL LAW COMMEMORATION INTERRUPTED BY FAR-RIGHT VIOLENCE AS CLASHES BREAK OUT IN KABANKALAN
Manila Times
September 22, 2016
Left-wing activists hold a demonstration in the former Filipino capital of Manila, shortly before far-right vigilantes loyal to the legacy of notorious former military dictator Artemio Tadiar started their clashes with them.
(Kabankalan, NEW NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION) - The anniversary of former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos's declaration of Martial Law yesterday was marred by violent clashes between the victims of the Marcos dictatorship and far-right ultranationalists loyal to the legacy of another former dictator, Artemio Tadiar. The commemoration of Martial Law started with a vigil in Kabankalan's Ricarte Square, when the surviving victims of Marcos's dictatorship had lit candles in the square, before a local Catholic priest summoned the crowd for a prayer. It didn't take long, until Tadiarists had converged on the square and started chanting pro-Tadiar slogans and giving out fascist salutes to imitate the radical Fatherland Freedom Party members that adopted said salutes as proof of their loyalty to Nicanor Faeldon, Larry Gadon, and Elly Pamatong. Likewise, the surviving left-wing activists that have arrived to conduct their own commemoration of the deaths of their comrades in the fight against the Marcos dictatorship, as well as numerous other comrades that were lost in the Filipino Civil War, while fighting for the New People's Army. The presence of the leftists was also enough for the far-right vigilantes to provoke them, leading to the fights. After four hours of close quarters combat, in which over 150 left-wing activists and 186 former Martial Law victims were hospitalized, with a confirmed 27 activists confirmed dead. The Legarda administration came under fire when it was revealed that local law enforcement were slow to respond to the melee at hand.
"Why the slow response to what appeared to be a very long beating? This looks like a hypebest brawl gone horribly wrong. You have the victims of Martial Law that wanted to remember the day their suffering began on one side, and you also have apologists for another old dictatorship picking fights with them!" shouts Vice President Nancy Binay, during a session in the Bayanihan. "It is just as we feared the most: the military, and law enforcement are still riddled with junta loyalists who preferred to take orders from generals than civilian politicians."
The Patriotic Socialist Front, a Titoist offshoot of the now-extinct Communist Party of the Philippines, had condemned the vicious attacks that the far-right had carried out against its members, though they also praised the activists that fought them for four hours.
"Our comrades managed to bloody the noses of the fascists during this tragic day. However, they in turn, had succeeded in killing a large number of our members," says Carlos Isagani Zarate, the current leader of the Patriotic Socialist Front, said, during a separate rally in Cebu City. "The neo-reactionary and neo-fascist scourge is alive and well, and our struggle continues. While we acknowledge the legacy of the late Gregorio Rosal in his quest to build a more equitable and federal Philippine state under socialism, we recognize that he made several errors in his quest to make it a reality."
The rejuvenated Filipino left-wing movement had arisen during the middle years of the Grace Poe presidency, when Mr. Zarate returned to the Philippines from his exile in Yugoslavia, where he resided after the Filipino Civil War had ended. Much of the Patriotic Socialist Front's ideas and policies came from Yugoslav socialists that he came into contact with, while in exile in Yugoslavia. As a graduate of the University of Belgrade, Zarate specialized in Asian Studies, and was a key speaker in several leftist events, where his skills in public speaking attracted the attention of various leftists from around the world. Since his return to the Philippines, Zarate emerged as a major figure in the post-Tadiar politics, where he called for bigger land reform, as well as calling for the dismantling of Tadiar-era social and economic policies. Most importantly, Zarate advocated for the Philippines to normalize ties with China, a proposal that remained deeply unpopular among the Philippine political elite and general public, whose memories of China's military aggression remained fresh. Since then, Zarate has also emerged as one of the biggest crusaders in rehabilitating the numerous amount of dead victims of the Marcos dictatorship, as well as calling for the ban on far-right parties that openly supported the late Major General Tadiar.
"We owe it to our victims to keep their memories alive, while the ghost of Artemio Tadiar still haunts the Philippines. Even then, anti-communists have always glorified the violence of the Tadiar dictatorship, when it came to fighting us," says Zarate, in that same rally. "This will be our biggest battle to date, and the pro-Tadiar camp is willing to destroy our efforts, but they will not win."
---
"The 2020 US Presidential Election was seen as one of the most polarizing and bitterly divided election in American history, and thanks to the 28th Amendment, which was largely triggered by the growth of these formerly minor parties that catapulted to center stage of American politics in the 2004 elections, this is the first election in which neither the Republican or Democratic candidates advanced to the second round of the election. As anyone can recall, the 28th Amendment was adopted in 2005 to ensure that there would be two rounds in an election, should there be no clear winner in the first round. That election paved the way for Carol Moseley-Braun's victory, but her assassination in 2007 allowed Dick Gephardt to finish his short term, before John Edwards won the 2008 election. Representing the Social Progressive Party is Chuck Schumer as the presidential candidate, with Michelle Lujan Grisham as his running mate. On the opposite side, the National Revival Party is represented by John Bennett Ramsey, the former head of the CIA, with Tucker Carlson as his running mate. Originally, James Traficant was supposed to run for President, but his death in 2018, as a result of a heart attack, had led to Ramsey's selection. Ramsey's tenure as head of the CIA was from 2001 to 2011, in which he stepped down in order to run for political office as a House Representative in Colorado. Schumer's globalist stance in which the interests of American oligarchic elites were in stark contrast to Ramsey's populist stance in which the interests of the working populace were protected. Economically speaking, Ramsey wanted to focus more on job creation, as well as the revitalization of America's infrastructure, which was a feat that was launched by former President Dukakis, in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta Earthquake that killed thousands of people in the Bay Area. In addition, the differences between the two men were immense. Schumer, according to Ramsey himself, was much of an old money kind of guy, while Ramsey was viered by Schumer as one of those bloodthirsty thugs that would not bat an eyelid if a rogue agent was poisoned, or had carried out a false flag attack anywhere else. Most importantly, Ramsey had admired much of the late Traficant's push for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, and for the US government to reassert its responsibility for printing its currency. The supporters of the two candidates were always at odds with each other, but the oddball neo-Nazi thugs would align themselves with the notorious anti-Semite in Kevin MacDonald and the American Freedom Party. Supporters of Chuck Schumer consisted mostly of cosmopolitans that resided in large cities and could afford a number of luxuries, while Ramsey supporters are often found in suburban areas, as well as in rural regions where agriculture is the dominant industry there. What is the most important feature of both campaigns were Schumer's ability to use his connections to help run his campaigns and Ramsey's CIA Corsair connections that he employed to help indoctrinate the rural and suburban population into his ideology. Above all else, Ramsey was also effective in establishing connections with ethnic minorities in the United States, which was demonstrated by the large support base from the Vietnamese-American, Thai-American, Hispanic-American, Filipino-American, and African-American communities. However, Schumer had insisted that Ramsey was not a friend of Israel, and he was right in that matter. Ramsey wanted to focus solely on the Western Hemisphere, while having no official stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In a way, Ramsey had taken to heart Traficant's complaints about American money going to Israel instead of its people, which was viewed by Schumer as an anti-Semitic rant. However, by far the most striking thing about Ramsey was that he could fool anyone into thinking that he's a well presented politician that embodies American stability, but people like Senator Alex Jones had a rather pessimistic view of the National Revival Party candidate. Remember that Senator Jones was a fierce opponent of the CIA Corsairs and Cowboys all of his political life, and his ambitions for the Presidency on the Libertarian Party ticket remained unfulfilled." Linda Tripp, from the TrippWire Podcast, titled: '2020: The Year of Political Extremism', released on February 15, 2020.
---
Portions from the Interview with Former Bulgarian President Ognyan Gerdzhikov
NHK News 9, released on June 24, 2017
Discussing the Authoritarian Backsliding of Bulgaria Under President Desislav Chukulov
Interviewer: It is no secret that the President of Bulgaria has been known as one of the few pro-Russian politicians that are elected into public office in Europe as a whole, but what we've learned mostly from how President Chukulov has conducted himself on the international stage, is that his ability to negotiate with various governments around the world has been unusually remarkable for someone who is considered on the far-right of the political spectrum. Could you please tell us how President Chukulov was able to seize the Presidency?
Gerdzhikov: (sighs) Well, before he ran for the Presidency in 2016, Chukulov had been the long running mayor of Ruse, where his policies of cultural preservation, along with his economic goal of turning the city he's managing into one of Bulgaria's thriving cities along the Danube. He was able to maintain good relations with various Romanian and Yugoslav politicians, but his main flaw was that he had a harsh stance on the growing narcotics problem that plagued post-Communist Bulgarian society.
Interviewer: Was one of Chukulov's anti-narcotics policy involved the destruction of illegal distribution centers where narcotics were being assembled?
Gerdzhikov: Yes, and Chukulov was aware of the global drug trade. He constantly clashed with various law enforcement officials that were appalled by his underhanded tactics used to arrest drug dealers. One other thing in mind though, was that Chukulov played a role in busting down a Philippine intelligence ring, which was used by the former military regime to keep an eye on the political exiles that have settled in the Balkans, as well as connecting with various key figures in the European underworld. We've already seen their ties to the Japanese and Korean underworld have a negative effect on the Philippines as a whole, and we feared that the Balkans might end up having a problem with organized crime.
Interviewer: Can you please explain to us how Chukulov played a role in the notorious Ruse Spy Ring Scandal of 2005?
Gerdzhikov: Certainly. At that time, Chukulov was already on his second term as mayor of Ruse, when he started to notice that the Filipino political exiles, or so he thought, had started to settle in his city. Initially, they took menial jobs that the Roma community normally hold, but what alarmed him was how the so-called exiles had kept their haircut maintained and had a rigid sense of discipline. The 'exiles' mostly kept to themselves, but I believe that the murder of an exile who had ties to leftist organizations in Europe started the crack, and it wasn't long until one of the so-called exiles had unexpectedly announced that he's defecting to our country. Dennis Jabatan had disclosed his role as one of the few intelligence officers that was posted by the former Tadiar dictatorship, and that his main job was to surveil and possibly assassinate the targeted individuals. He confessed his role in front of local law enforcement, and Chukulov was personally present in the interrogations. It wasn't long until Bulgarian intelligence helped arrest the intelligence officers from the Philippines that an additional scandal broke out within the same spy ring scandal.
Interviewer: You're referring to the plot hatched by Philippine intelligence officers to funnel cash to various pro-Intermarium and pro-ECA politicians in return for information on each and every single Filipino exile that has resided within Bulgaria, right?
Gerdzhikov: Yes. Keep in mind that Bulgaria had not qualified to enter the European Continental Association, due to the extensive amount of social, political, and economic reforms that we had to undertake, in order to qualify. We also kept in mind that when the ECA had succeeded the European Community, they kicked Greece out when they found out that they falsified some of their information in order to gain entry. Right now, the ECA has placed the same expectations on Greece that they imposed on us for entry into the organization.
Interviewer: All right. What do you think of Chukulov's presidency so far?
Gerdzhikov: So far, he's done modestly for himself. Luckily, we're not a member of the ECA, because we used our position to secure new trade deals with Greece, Turkey, and has so far declared our state to be neutral. However, we're also worried that his Russophilic policies might have a negative reaction from the Intermarium club, especially concerning Romania's membership in it and its relations with Bulgaria. At the same time, his domestic rhetoric has actually won supporters from across the political spectrum.
Interviewer: How so?
Gerdzhikov: Well, Chukulov has bemoaned Bulgaria's population decline, largely thanks to emigration. At the same time, our economy has struggled to recover from the chaotic post-communist period, and his negotiations for new trade agreements with the ECA and the Eurasian Union received significant criticism from within our government. Prime Minister Magdalena Tasheva in particular, has cautioned President Chukulov against further erosion of Bulgarian sovereignty.
Interviewer: All right. There was one economic ambition that President Chukulov has launched. His project, the 2030 Initiative for Bulgaria, is rather ambitious and a bit too idealistic. His opponents had criticized the lack of restraint and pragmatism in the initiative for the project, citing shortages of foreign direct investments in the Bulgarian economy. Furthermore, funding for the development of various major cities had been increased, at the expense of the rural and suburban countryside. Do you think the opposition was right in their fears that Chukulov's ambitions would backfire?
Gerdzhikov: Yes, and no. Yes, as in the lack of pragmatism in areas of infrastructure upgrade as a result of firesales of certain companies to oligarchs from within Europe and especially Turkey. Those companies now owned by foreigners aren't interested in improving on their latest investment. Rather, they are interested in using their control of Bulgarian assets as leverage in their negotiations with the Bulgarian government. This is the one area where the Bulgarian left had a point, that Chukulov was powerless to stop further sales of Bulgarian assets to foreign entities.
Interviewer: What point, exactly?
Gerdzhikov: That all of the previous cabinets, including my own, were desperate for funds to revive our economy, that we resorted to selling what we had, on pennies on the dollar. Chimimport for example, had filed for bankruptcy in 1991, and it took us seven years until we found a suitable buyer to purchase it. Sweden's Axel Johnson purchased Chimimport for approximately $32 million US dollars, while Finland's Aktia Bank has bought DZI for approximately $66 million US dollars. During my presidency, I had overseen the sales of HVB Bank Biochim to the Power Corporation of Canada, Ariana Brewery to the Czech Republic's Royal Brewery of Krusovice, and VRZ Karlovo to Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation.
Interviewer: I can see the explanation behind President Chukulov's push for the investment in small scale start up businesses. In fact, the first small scale start up business that was launched in the 21st century had occurred during your presidency, and since start ups were becoming popular in Bulgaria, due to lax regulations on individual start up businesses, we are seeing more foreign digital nomads that are settling in Bulgaria. However, not all locals were pleased with the influx of digital nomads that have arrived there. Were there any protests at all?
Gerdzhikov: Some, but they were held in small villages and small cities, especially areas where the locals aren't used to seeing foreigners reside within their villages.
Interviewer: So how do you see Bulgaria's politics progressing, moving forward?
Gerdzhikov: I think that if President Chukulov had focused more on tackling domestic issues, while keeping his head down in foreign policy, I can imagine that we would see most of those issues solved. However, even the most strident Bulgarian nationalist would want to see our nation eventually integrated into the European Continental Association, simply because Europe as a whole needs its own economic prosperity, to avoid becoming a satellite of either the United States or Russia. Even Turkey, which had been waiting for almost three decades to join the ECA, had wisely decided to abandon its ambitions to join the club, in order to increase its diplomatic and economic clout.
MARTIAL LAW COMMEMORATION INTERRUPTED BY FAR-RIGHT VIOLENCE AS CLASHES BREAK OUT IN KABANKALAN
Manila Times
September 22, 2016
Left-wing activists hold a demonstration in the former Filipino capital of Manila, shortly before far-right vigilantes loyal to the legacy of notorious former military dictator Artemio Tadiar started their clashes with them.
(Kabankalan, NEW NATIONAL CAPITAL REGION) - The anniversary of former Filipino dictator Ferdinand Marcos's declaration of Martial Law yesterday was marred by violent clashes between the victims of the Marcos dictatorship and far-right ultranationalists loyal to the legacy of another former dictator, Artemio Tadiar. The commemoration of Martial Law started with a vigil in Kabankalan's Ricarte Square, when the surviving victims of Marcos's dictatorship had lit candles in the square, before a local Catholic priest summoned the crowd for a prayer. It didn't take long, until Tadiarists had converged on the square and started chanting pro-Tadiar slogans and giving out fascist salutes to imitate the radical Fatherland Freedom Party members that adopted said salutes as proof of their loyalty to Nicanor Faeldon, Larry Gadon, and Elly Pamatong. Likewise, the surviving left-wing activists that have arrived to conduct their own commemoration of the deaths of their comrades in the fight against the Marcos dictatorship, as well as numerous other comrades that were lost in the Filipino Civil War, while fighting for the New People's Army. The presence of the leftists was also enough for the far-right vigilantes to provoke them, leading to the fights. After four hours of close quarters combat, in which over 150 left-wing activists and 186 former Martial Law victims were hospitalized, with a confirmed 27 activists confirmed dead. The Legarda administration came under fire when it was revealed that local law enforcement were slow to respond to the melee at hand.
"Why the slow response to what appeared to be a very long beating? This looks like a hypebest brawl gone horribly wrong. You have the victims of Martial Law that wanted to remember the day their suffering began on one side, and you also have apologists for another old dictatorship picking fights with them!" shouts Vice President Nancy Binay, during a session in the Bayanihan. "It is just as we feared the most: the military, and law enforcement are still riddled with junta loyalists who preferred to take orders from generals than civilian politicians."
The Patriotic Socialist Front, a Titoist offshoot of the now-extinct Communist Party of the Philippines, had condemned the vicious attacks that the far-right had carried out against its members, though they also praised the activists that fought them for four hours.
"Our comrades managed to bloody the noses of the fascists during this tragic day. However, they in turn, had succeeded in killing a large number of our members," says Carlos Isagani Zarate, the current leader of the Patriotic Socialist Front, said, during a separate rally in Cebu City. "The neo-reactionary and neo-fascist scourge is alive and well, and our struggle continues. While we acknowledge the legacy of the late Gregorio Rosal in his quest to build a more equitable and federal Philippine state under socialism, we recognize that he made several errors in his quest to make it a reality."
The rejuvenated Filipino left-wing movement had arisen during the middle years of the Grace Poe presidency, when Mr. Zarate returned to the Philippines from his exile in Yugoslavia, where he resided after the Filipino Civil War had ended. Much of the Patriotic Socialist Front's ideas and policies came from Yugoslav socialists that he came into contact with, while in exile in Yugoslavia. As a graduate of the University of Belgrade, Zarate specialized in Asian Studies, and was a key speaker in several leftist events, where his skills in public speaking attracted the attention of various leftists from around the world. Since his return to the Philippines, Zarate emerged as a major figure in the post-Tadiar politics, where he called for bigger land reform, as well as calling for the dismantling of Tadiar-era social and economic policies. Most importantly, Zarate advocated for the Philippines to normalize ties with China, a proposal that remained deeply unpopular among the Philippine political elite and general public, whose memories of China's military aggression remained fresh. Since then, Zarate has also emerged as one of the biggest crusaders in rehabilitating the numerous amount of dead victims of the Marcos dictatorship, as well as calling for the ban on far-right parties that openly supported the late Major General Tadiar.
"We owe it to our victims to keep their memories alive, while the ghost of Artemio Tadiar still haunts the Philippines. Even then, anti-communists have always glorified the violence of the Tadiar dictatorship, when it came to fighting us," says Zarate, in that same rally. "This will be our biggest battle to date, and the pro-Tadiar camp is willing to destroy our efforts, but they will not win."
---
"The 2020 US Presidential Election was seen as one of the most polarizing and bitterly divided election in American history, and thanks to the 28th Amendment, which was largely triggered by the growth of these formerly minor parties that catapulted to center stage of American politics in the 2004 elections, this is the first election in which neither the Republican or Democratic candidates advanced to the second round of the election. As anyone can recall, the 28th Amendment was adopted in 2005 to ensure that there would be two rounds in an election, should there be no clear winner in the first round. That election paved the way for Carol Moseley-Braun's victory, but her assassination in 2007 allowed Dick Gephardt to finish his short term, before John Edwards won the 2008 election. Representing the Social Progressive Party is Chuck Schumer as the presidential candidate, with Michelle Lujan Grisham as his running mate. On the opposite side, the National Revival Party is represented by John Bennett Ramsey, the former head of the CIA, with Tucker Carlson as his running mate. Originally, James Traficant was supposed to run for President, but his death in 2018, as a result of a heart attack, had led to Ramsey's selection. Ramsey's tenure as head of the CIA was from 2001 to 2011, in which he stepped down in order to run for political office as a House Representative in Colorado. Schumer's globalist stance in which the interests of American oligarchic elites were in stark contrast to Ramsey's populist stance in which the interests of the working populace were protected. Economically speaking, Ramsey wanted to focus more on job creation, as well as the revitalization of America's infrastructure, which was a feat that was launched by former President Dukakis, in the aftermath of the Loma Prieta Earthquake that killed thousands of people in the Bay Area. In addition, the differences between the two men were immense. Schumer, according to Ramsey himself, was much of an old money kind of guy, while Ramsey was viered by Schumer as one of those bloodthirsty thugs that would not bat an eyelid if a rogue agent was poisoned, or had carried out a false flag attack anywhere else. Most importantly, Ramsey had admired much of the late Traficant's push for the abolition of the Federal Reserve, and for the US government to reassert its responsibility for printing its currency. The supporters of the two candidates were always at odds with each other, but the oddball neo-Nazi thugs would align themselves with the notorious anti-Semite in Kevin MacDonald and the American Freedom Party. Supporters of Chuck Schumer consisted mostly of cosmopolitans that resided in large cities and could afford a number of luxuries, while Ramsey supporters are often found in suburban areas, as well as in rural regions where agriculture is the dominant industry there. What is the most important feature of both campaigns were Schumer's ability to use his connections to help run his campaigns and Ramsey's CIA Corsair connections that he employed to help indoctrinate the rural and suburban population into his ideology. Above all else, Ramsey was also effective in establishing connections with ethnic minorities in the United States, which was demonstrated by the large support base from the Vietnamese-American, Thai-American, Hispanic-American, Filipino-American, and African-American communities. However, Schumer had insisted that Ramsey was not a friend of Israel, and he was right in that matter. Ramsey wanted to focus solely on the Western Hemisphere, while having no official stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict. In a way, Ramsey had taken to heart Traficant's complaints about American money going to Israel instead of its people, which was viewed by Schumer as an anti-Semitic rant. However, by far the most striking thing about Ramsey was that he could fool anyone into thinking that he's a well presented politician that embodies American stability, but people like Senator Alex Jones had a rather pessimistic view of the National Revival Party candidate. Remember that Senator Jones was a fierce opponent of the CIA Corsairs and Cowboys all of his political life, and his ambitions for the Presidency on the Libertarian Party ticket remained unfulfilled." Linda Tripp, from the TrippWire Podcast, titled: '2020: The Year of Political Extremism', released on February 15, 2020.
---
Portions from the Interview with Former Bulgarian President Ognyan Gerdzhikov
NHK News 9, released on June 24, 2017
Discussing the Authoritarian Backsliding of Bulgaria Under President Desislav Chukulov
Interviewer: It is no secret that the President of Bulgaria has been known as one of the few pro-Russian politicians that are elected into public office in Europe as a whole, but what we've learned mostly from how President Chukulov has conducted himself on the international stage, is that his ability to negotiate with various governments around the world has been unusually remarkable for someone who is considered on the far-right of the political spectrum. Could you please tell us how President Chukulov was able to seize the Presidency?
Gerdzhikov: (sighs) Well, before he ran for the Presidency in 2016, Chukulov had been the long running mayor of Ruse, where his policies of cultural preservation, along with his economic goal of turning the city he's managing into one of Bulgaria's thriving cities along the Danube. He was able to maintain good relations with various Romanian and Yugoslav politicians, but his main flaw was that he had a harsh stance on the growing narcotics problem that plagued post-Communist Bulgarian society.
Interviewer: Was one of Chukulov's anti-narcotics policy involved the destruction of illegal distribution centers where narcotics were being assembled?
Gerdzhikov: Yes, and Chukulov was aware of the global drug trade. He constantly clashed with various law enforcement officials that were appalled by his underhanded tactics used to arrest drug dealers. One other thing in mind though, was that Chukulov played a role in busting down a Philippine intelligence ring, which was used by the former military regime to keep an eye on the political exiles that have settled in the Balkans, as well as connecting with various key figures in the European underworld. We've already seen their ties to the Japanese and Korean underworld have a negative effect on the Philippines as a whole, and we feared that the Balkans might end up having a problem with organized crime.
Interviewer: Can you please explain to us how Chukulov played a role in the notorious Ruse Spy Ring Scandal of 2005?
Gerdzhikov: Certainly. At that time, Chukulov was already on his second term as mayor of Ruse, when he started to notice that the Filipino political exiles, or so he thought, had started to settle in his city. Initially, they took menial jobs that the Roma community normally hold, but what alarmed him was how the so-called exiles had kept their haircut maintained and had a rigid sense of discipline. The 'exiles' mostly kept to themselves, but I believe that the murder of an exile who had ties to leftist organizations in Europe started the crack, and it wasn't long until one of the so-called exiles had unexpectedly announced that he's defecting to our country. Dennis Jabatan had disclosed his role as one of the few intelligence officers that was posted by the former Tadiar dictatorship, and that his main job was to surveil and possibly assassinate the targeted individuals. He confessed his role in front of local law enforcement, and Chukulov was personally present in the interrogations. It wasn't long until Bulgarian intelligence helped arrest the intelligence officers from the Philippines that an additional scandal broke out within the same spy ring scandal.
Interviewer: You're referring to the plot hatched by Philippine intelligence officers to funnel cash to various pro-Intermarium and pro-ECA politicians in return for information on each and every single Filipino exile that has resided within Bulgaria, right?
Gerdzhikov: Yes. Keep in mind that Bulgaria had not qualified to enter the European Continental Association, due to the extensive amount of social, political, and economic reforms that we had to undertake, in order to qualify. We also kept in mind that when the ECA had succeeded the European Community, they kicked Greece out when they found out that they falsified some of their information in order to gain entry. Right now, the ECA has placed the same expectations on Greece that they imposed on us for entry into the organization.
Interviewer: All right. What do you think of Chukulov's presidency so far?
Gerdzhikov: So far, he's done modestly for himself. Luckily, we're not a member of the ECA, because we used our position to secure new trade deals with Greece, Turkey, and has so far declared our state to be neutral. However, we're also worried that his Russophilic policies might have a negative reaction from the Intermarium club, especially concerning Romania's membership in it and its relations with Bulgaria. At the same time, his domestic rhetoric has actually won supporters from across the political spectrum.
Interviewer: How so?
Gerdzhikov: Well, Chukulov has bemoaned Bulgaria's population decline, largely thanks to emigration. At the same time, our economy has struggled to recover from the chaotic post-communist period, and his negotiations for new trade agreements with the ECA and the Eurasian Union received significant criticism from within our government. Prime Minister Magdalena Tasheva in particular, has cautioned President Chukulov against further erosion of Bulgarian sovereignty.
Interviewer: All right. There was one economic ambition that President Chukulov has launched. His project, the 2030 Initiative for Bulgaria, is rather ambitious and a bit too idealistic. His opponents had criticized the lack of restraint and pragmatism in the initiative for the project, citing shortages of foreign direct investments in the Bulgarian economy. Furthermore, funding for the development of various major cities had been increased, at the expense of the rural and suburban countryside. Do you think the opposition was right in their fears that Chukulov's ambitions would backfire?
Gerdzhikov: Yes, and no. Yes, as in the lack of pragmatism in areas of infrastructure upgrade as a result of firesales of certain companies to oligarchs from within Europe and especially Turkey. Those companies now owned by foreigners aren't interested in improving on their latest investment. Rather, they are interested in using their control of Bulgarian assets as leverage in their negotiations with the Bulgarian government. This is the one area where the Bulgarian left had a point, that Chukulov was powerless to stop further sales of Bulgarian assets to foreign entities.
Interviewer: What point, exactly?
Gerdzhikov: That all of the previous cabinets, including my own, were desperate for funds to revive our economy, that we resorted to selling what we had, on pennies on the dollar. Chimimport for example, had filed for bankruptcy in 1991, and it took us seven years until we found a suitable buyer to purchase it. Sweden's Axel Johnson purchased Chimimport for approximately $32 million US dollars, while Finland's Aktia Bank has bought DZI for approximately $66 million US dollars. During my presidency, I had overseen the sales of HVB Bank Biochim to the Power Corporation of Canada, Ariana Brewery to the Czech Republic's Royal Brewery of Krusovice, and VRZ Karlovo to Japan's Toyota Motor Corporation.
Interviewer: I can see the explanation behind President Chukulov's push for the investment in small scale start up businesses. In fact, the first small scale start up business that was launched in the 21st century had occurred during your presidency, and since start ups were becoming popular in Bulgaria, due to lax regulations on individual start up businesses, we are seeing more foreign digital nomads that are settling in Bulgaria. However, not all locals were pleased with the influx of digital nomads that have arrived there. Were there any protests at all?
Gerdzhikov: Some, but they were held in small villages and small cities, especially areas where the locals aren't used to seeing foreigners reside within their villages.
Interviewer: So how do you see Bulgaria's politics progressing, moving forward?
Gerdzhikov: I think that if President Chukulov had focused more on tackling domestic issues, while keeping his head down in foreign policy, I can imagine that we would see most of those issues solved. However, even the most strident Bulgarian nationalist would want to see our nation eventually integrated into the European Continental Association, simply because Europe as a whole needs its own economic prosperity, to avoid becoming a satellite of either the United States or Russia. Even Turkey, which had been waiting for almost three decades to join the ECA, had wisely decided to abandon its ambitions to join the club, in order to increase its diplomatic and economic clout.
