Amidst protests and scandals in parliament, the procedure under the Constitution continues, after the resignation of the government.
When will the early vote be, how will the vote be held and are there any surprises - we ask Assoc. Prof. Borislav Tsekov, a lecturer in constitutional law, in the program “This Morning“ on bTV.
Yesterday, President Rumen Radev told journalists that the date of the elections is not as important as the amendments to the Electoral Code and the fairness of the vote. The calls of both GERB and PP-DB are for elections on March 29.
„I do not see a direct connection between the protests and the date of the elections. As for Mr. Radev's statement, I agree with him in its second part - about fair elections. As for the first part - whether there should be changes to the Electoral Code, as a constitutionalist, I will categorically say that this is not the president's job and he should not allow himself to give instructions to the National Assembly what laws to adopt, and vice versa - the National Assembly should not give instructions to the president what policy and what statements to make,“ he said.
„As for the date, we are now in the final phase of the constitutional procedure. Within a 7-day period, which expires next Wednesday, a mandate will be handed over to one of the following parliamentary groups, after which this exploratory mandate will be fulfilled or returned as unfulfilled within a reasonable period of time. A reasonable period does not mean that anyone can do whatever they want“, explained Assoc. Prof. Tsekov.
He also commented on the possibility that the president will try to extend the time until the appointment of a caretaker government and the scheduling of the early parliamentary vote, so as to give the deputies enough time to understand whether or not machine voting is possible, and in what way:
“I assume that he will try (Rumen Radev – ed. note), but this attempt must also have some reasonable constitutional framework, it cannot last 1-2 months, for example. The idea that we will again make radical changes to the Electoral Code at 12 to 5 is not a legitimate idea. It is no coincidence that the Venice Commission has repeatedly criticized this extremely bad practice, especially in the case of Bulgaria.
In his words, when using only 100% machine voting, without subsequent verification, it will be very difficult to prove violations. And when including scanning devices, he specified:
“There is still a paper ballot included, which is subject to re-verification. I am against the very idea of these scanning devices now. For the next elections, it could be, but at 12 to 5 a radical change like this… it is true that there are in the USA, this is how paper ballots are counted en masse there. There, people vote mainly on paper and then with machines like printers“.