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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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• Chile 2002
  
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Chile underwent a process of democratization almost at the same time as the bulk of the countries in Easter and Central Europe. The population in some of them still fights over the issues arising from their communist past; fight over interpreting the past events; fight over measuring some history figures; fight over distributing the national wealth and political power not according to the individual merits but depending on their past social positions. Such countries live their "cold civil wars" without understanding that they are living not on the time and place inherited by the past generation, but on the one borrowed from their children. All their fights take vital resources from their children. When finally they understand all this, it may be too late to fix the things.

Chile was not unique in what appears to be authoritarian experience of both its left and right versions. It's rather unique in what appears to be the way this society decided to put everything dividing behind in order to look ahead. When the former general and then lifetime senator Pinochet was arrested in Britain, the political elite in Chile called unanimously for his liberation. For some there could have been no better opportunity to settle the scores with the past foe. Instead, they decided not to wake up again the ghosts of the past.

It's worth remembering the past that unites, not divides, the population. The president Allende that divided the nation on "good guys" (workers) and "bad gays" (everyone else) or the general Pinochet that executed his enemies without any sign of due court process, these are things that no nation should be proud of and no nation should ever try to use again in the political wrestling. If we can't change the past, we can try not to repeat it and the first step is to put the past where its proper place is, behind, not ahead of us.

With no intention to keep open the past wounds, Chilean governments in the last years have concentrated all their efforts on achieving economic and social progress. It's obvious, looking at the economic and other statistics provided by respected international organizations, that Chile has one goal, to be on top of the human development in the continent and to show its example to the other nations. With no sympathies whether a particular policy should be perceived as "left" or "right", the Chilean government continues to be first and foremost pragmatic in its policies. Because there are no such things as "left" or "right" bread or "left" or "right" liberties.

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* - The famous "Third Wave" of democratization that inspired Huntington in his book some 12 years ago. This wave, according to the author, has begun with the democratization of Portugal in the mid-1970s and is still continuing with no massive reverses. More recent events have shown that some newly democratized countries have again receded toward authoritarianism (e.g. Belarus).

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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Chile.