Vote buying is not a battle of the caretaker government alone, but of the entire society. And the only way we will know if we are winning it is when we see the activity of citizens during the vote. If we see that they vote en masse, are calm and know that their vote will be counted and will weigh - then we will know that we have won this battle. And I think that the requests that the Secretary General, the Minister of the Interior and the Ministry of Internal Affairs are making with their actions - are going in the right direction. We do not measure ourselves by the number of arrests, but by the trust that we create in citizens. He stated this in the program "On Focus" Acting Prime Minister Andrey Gyurov, commenting on the actions against the violation of citizens' electoral rights and the arrests related to vote buying in recent weeks.
According to him, the trust of Bulgarian citizens has increased. This is visible in the signals - when people trust the institutions, they are open, share information and expect action. And this is exactly what we are observing - a more than tenfold increase in signals, concrete actions and real results", he emphasized.
A month before the vote: We send signals about irregularities to the Ministry of Internal Affairs on an open line
And he gave the example of the Russian citizen who was caught the day before, who offered money to vote in favor of a specific party before the upcoming elections. "Here we are not talking about individual voters, but about entire polling stations that are bought in order to secure a certain number of votes. This must be stopped", the Prime Minister is categorical.
Gyurov pointed out that in the last elections it turned out that the violations were in entire sections: "And the most interesting thing is that the institutions do not care about this. There were no preventive actions by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, no arrests, not to mention consequences in the prosecutor's office".
In his words, we have a serious institutional problem with the prosecutor's office. "And this is clear not only to us, but also to Bulgarian citizens. Our job is to get the signal to the prosecutor's office. But it must be clear what is happening there. as in the case of the detained mayor for violating the electoral rights of citizens. He was charged, but only an hour later the decree was changed and the same mayor was called as a witness. The question is who and why changed the prosecutor's office's opinion within an hour?", the Prime Minister asked.
The Prime Minister to the Bulgarians: Go out and vote - this is your strength
He pointed out that many people "are trying to convince us that it is impossible to fight the conquered state. "But our government - with the way it works and the example we set - is trying to show that this is not the case. We discussed a lot within the official cabinet the 150th anniversary of the April Uprising and the behavior of our revivalists. If they had believed that the system could not be changed - we would not be here now", said Gyurov. And he added: "But these people then believed that their actions, even if they could not go all the way, would have an effect. They will change people's attitudes so that they can believe in their own strength, go out to vote and with their actions change their fate further".
"In the caretaker government, we feel like volunteers. Even people - our relatives, friends, well-wishers, say: “How did you get into this! What kind of things will happen to you?“. And they happen constantly. Everyone sees the attacks on the entire caretaker government, especially on the Minister of the Interior, on Minister Yankulov and on me", he pointed out.
But he was categorical that what is clearly visible is that "some people are very afraid of having fair elections in the country". "That is why the attacks are targeted and aimed precisely at certain people. But I also see a positive side in this", he pointed out.