14 principles were adopted in the EU to guarantee an ethical, civilized election campaign in all EU countries. According to Stoil Tsitselkov, a member of the Public Council of the CEC and an observer for the EC of the elections in Bulgaria, this is also possible in our country.
Regardless of our political, social and other interests, the principles are common and they guarantee not only fairer elections, but also trust, he emphasized to BNR and added:
"The problem is trust - that we don't have trust. We do not believe that the elections are fair.
In his words, the potential offered by technologies, not only in terms of communication, but also as social networks, is not being used:
"CEC and CEM persistently pretend that they are not the media, that they do not influence our choices, that we cannot get information there on election day, and they refuse to regulate them - very conveniently. These are permanent structures. In my opinion, at least in the period between the elections, there should be a strategy on how to live together with these media, which are a strong factor.
Tsitselkov also emphasized the huge role of artificial intelligence both in campaigns and in processing results and logistics. We completely refuse to use this as well as develop capacity, he pointed out. According to him, there are elementary things that can be done and lead to better elections.
In his words, slanderous wars are not the main thing for us as citizens, and this is what disgusts him. He thinks that the political class wants the elections to be not entirely fair:
"What's happening right now - speaking out against technology and having a political leader come out and say 'these machines stole my election', but then there's no evidence, but there's no consequence - it leads to an extreme breakdown of trust".
He expressed his opinion that what has been happening in the country in recent days is likely to alienate many voters.
Stoil Tsitselkov noted another trend - that we are constantly hiring new and new people in the administration, when the trend in the world is to reduce staff and increase the use of technology. We don't have a bigger group in the state than the administration, he was categorical.