The fuss about Vasil and his North Macedonian 2021 Eurovision entry took a new turn today. From Bulgaria, there’s now talk about letting him represent their country in next year’s Eurovision Song Contest – if the North Macedonian broadcaster let him down.
Poor Vasil. He was selected to represent North Macedonia at the 2020 Eurovision Song Contest. As the contest got cancelled, fortunately for him, the broadcaster showed enough faith in the talented singer, and re-selected him for the 2021 contest. Things were looking good, and Vasil released his entry Here I Stand on the 11th of March. Just a few days later, things took a bad turn.
A petition to get him removed from representing North Macedonia kicked off. Vasil was criticised for promoting neighbouring country Bulgaria in his official video for the 2021 Eurovision entry. A piece of art in the video was for many too similar to the Bulgarian flag, and as Vasil hasn’t been hiding that he has double citizenship, many signed the petition. Vasil himself edited the video and released a version without the controversial art. But that didn’t stop the situation.
Just as you would expect the broadcaster MRT to support Vasil, they went out with a statement basically saying that they are looking into the situation and whether Vasil should represent them at the 2021 Eurovision Song Contest.
Fans supporting Vasil instead responded with a peition that he remains the 2021 representative for North Macedonia.
And today, things took another turn when Bulgarian party VMRO issued a statement wanting Vasil to represent Bulgaria at the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest. VMRO is a right-wing party represented in the Bulgarian parliament with 12 out of 240 seats. Their leader, Krasimir Karakachanov, is current Minister of Defence in Bulgaria.
Full statement from VMRO
Why did only the Bulgarian Vasil Garvanliev and the Bulgarian flag turn out to be “scandalous” for Skopje? For us, the answer is clear, and it is dictated by the fictional Macedonian idea and the relentless attempts by politicians there to manipulate history and use Bulgarian self-consciousness for repression. Similar perversions against the Bulgarians, which we are witnessing today, were committed in the dark years after the Comintern betrayal against Bulgaria and the Bulgarians from the Pirin and Vardar regions after 1944.
Let’s remind our brothers on the other side of the border. We live in the 21st century, Yugoslavia does not exist, and if they want to become part of the European Union, they must forget the great Macedonian idea and the false “Macedonian nation”, artificially created in Stalin’s Bolshevik laboratory, with the help of Georgi Dimitrov in favor of Tito.
Eurovision is a song contest for free and talented young people. What is happening with the representative of Republic og North Macedonia at Eurovision, Vasil Garvanliev, does not correspond in any way with the European values, to which Skopje officially claims that it aspires.
We from VMRO will not tolerate the planting of public sentiment against Garvanliev, just because he does not hide that he has a Bulgarian passport – as well as nearly 100,000 of our brothers there.
And if the young singer withdraws from the competition, we will call on Bulgaria to send him as its representative next year.
As long as VMRO is in the Bulgarian parliament, we will not allow militant Serbo-Macedonianism in the EU.
