Macedonian Journalist Interviewed

The Focus Information Agency is a good propaganda tool for the Bulgarian government. Macedonia does not have anything like it. We should. This is a good interview.

FOCUS Information Agency:

Dragan Pavlovic Latas, editor-in-chief of the Macedonian Vecer daily newspaper, in an interview with FOCUS News Agency

FOCUS: Mr Latas, regarding your today’s article that calls on Dosta Dimovska to Knock down Krasimir Karakachanov so that Pirin Macedonia could be set free, I’d like to ask you what do you mean with the words about the “freedom of Pirin Macedonia” and is Krasimir Karakachanov the factor that impedes this “freedom” that you write about?
Dragan Pavlovic Latas: Firstly, this is a thesis put on a preliminary thesis of part of the Bulgarian society… I read the Bulgarian Trud daily last week, whose article was published in the Macedonian Utrinksi Vesnik, and while I was in Bulgaria I read other papers too, and they still speak about Macedonianism, and not about Macedonian people. They still write that they are our brothers; we can see that neither the language is recognized; and with the presentation of a series of reasons they deny the existence of the Macedonian nation. This is a respond to all that and claims that all that is a slavery to the Serbian dominance in Macedonia. As a response to this, we, the people in Macedonia (…) Dosta Dimovska, and Ljubco Georgievski, is that this part of Macedonia is free, it has its nation, its state… And the fact they often abuse Pirin and Aegean Macedonia, under the same criteria – these are their criteria, and we define that this part of Macedonia is not free. It is about placing the issue on an absurd level so that we can explain it.

FOCUS: How would you recommend your idea about Mrs Dimovska to eliminate Karakachanov be interpreted – as a journalistic fiction, or as an appeal towards “hardening” the relations between our two countries?
Dragan Pavlovic Latas: If something becomes a senseless polemics, you can try explaining it in a way that may be absurd. Personally, I do not think that Mara Buneva is a national heroine. Mara Buneva deserve no attention. Howevr, someone persuades me that she deserves such attention. If this is a good example that should be mentioned and celebrated, than you can apply it once again. And since it cannot be applied again – this case, placed in today’s modern conditions, shows that it is all about a simple murder, in which there is nothing heroic. Well, this is made in such a context so that we can explain that Mara Buneva is nothing. Of course, it cannot be realized, and it is not an agitation to ‘knock down’ Karakachanov or something like that, but to explain the absurd of the framed-up heroine of Mara Buneva.

FOCUS: Do like holidaymaking in Bulgaria? How many times have you visited Bulgaria over the last couple of years and do you like Bulgaria in general?
Dragan Pavlovic Latas: I have not come to Bulgaria for 10 years now. I am personally glad that Bulgaria has joined the EU because if your neighbor is OK, you’ll be OK too. Unfortunately, when Bulgaria joined the EU, and after the several-year silence on the claims to the Macedonian nation. The issue was raised once again. Now, Bulgaria has no impediments for the EU. Before they were silent because they had to.


FOCUS: How do you see Macedonia’s future in the next five years and in 10 years, if it fails to join both NATO and EU?
Dragan Pavlovic Latas: Macedonia will become an EU member state, at least because it has better possibilities than Bulgaria. Macedonia has higher wages than Bulgaria – the average monthly payment in Macedonia is EUR 200, while the average salary in Bulgaria has not reached this level yet; Macedonia has a speedway, while Bulgaria doesn’t; Macedonia has Western culture, which has been accumulated for 60 – 70 years with the free travel abroad, which something that is not a fact in Bulgaria yet… This means that Macedonia has a better capacity and will join the EU.