Comment by Emilia Milcheva:
If democracy in Bulgaria is still alive, the elections for municipal councilors in Pazardzhik, won by the DPS-New Beginning, must be challenged after yesterday's violations. The vote was necessary after the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) invalidated the previous vote due to bags of valid ballots recorded as invalid.
According to the interim results, Delyan Peevski's party collected 17.63% of the votes, second is PP-DB, with whose list the mayor Petar Kulenski was elected - with 12.41%. Third with nearly 10% is the “Svoboda” party, whose list is led by local businessman Rumen Dimitrov, until recently in the group of mayor Todor Popov, who ruled for 16 years. The Bulgarian Socialist Party is fourth with over 7.65%, while the monopolist in the local vote, GERB, barely exceeds 6%.
Low turnout and scandals about bought votes
The voter turnout is 35.09%, four points lower than in the local elections in 2023. Most people never found a reason to go to the polls. This created a perfect environment for bought votes, signals about which rained down on election day. In the two sections in the village of Ognyanovo, out of 304 voters, 116 chose Peevski’s MRF. Yesterday, an observer told the Bulgarian National Radio how in one of the sections a woman, who identified herself as illiterate, nevertheless took the ballot. "She crossed out or did what she could behind the screen, came out and while the section election commission was looking for her on the list to sign, she said: "And who will give the 50 leva now?" I told her: "Okay, come now, let's find the one who gives the 50 leva." We found him here in the yard - a white T-shirt, white sneakers, a black jacket, a man. He, of course, denied it and ran away from the school yard," the observer explained.
The result: in the first local elections in which Peevski's formation ran after the split of the MRF, it won the most councilors in the municipal council - not because it has trust, but because the citizens were absent. The MRF has made a huge jump compared to 2023, when it received nearly 2%, which is 685 votes, and today the ballots are over 4,400.
Mayor Kulenski, who has been governing without a stable majority until now, will have to survive in an even more fragmented municipal council for the remaining two years of his term. He is one of the four mayors that the PP-DB won in regional centers, and who are under constant pressure.
The mayor of Varna, Blagomir Kotsev, is in custody on charges of corruption crimes, after the prosecutor's office and the anti-corruption commission brought the entire arsenal of institutional pressure on him. The former deputy mayor of Sofia, Nikola Barbutov, is also in custody. And the mayor of Sofia, Vasil Terziev, is forced to deal with sabotage and crises with transport, garbage and the capital's district heating - a picture that clearly outlines how unstable and vulnerable democracy is at the local level.
A new beginning for Pazardzhik
Pazardzhik is Peevski's preferred district, from where he has often run for MP on the MRF list and has won thanks to the Roma vote and risky sections in some settlements. So far, however, there has been no breakthrough in local elections, which is most likely due to the established good relations with the long-time mayor Todor Popov, which have already dried up. And in June 2024, the investigative website BIRD revealed that the leader of the "Velichy" party, Ivelin Mihaylov, is a partner in a dozen companies with Popov's wife.
From "Velichy" yesterday they were on the ground in Ognyanovo and carried out a “citizen's arrest” of two luxury cars - a Porsche and an Audi, with alleged vote sellers. The case was broadcast live by representatives of “We continue the change” and the “Justice for everyone” initiative. After several hours of the stopped cars being in the open trunk, for which a locksmith was waiting, no money was found. Mihaylov himself was on the ground, as well as the chairman of the PP Asen Vassilev and deputies from the party.
Former GERB deputy Desislava Todorova leads the list of MRF-New Beginning. In the local elections, she was a mayoral candidate from the Green Party, from which she also became a municipal councilor. Her husband Hristo Todorov was a deputy in the 43rd National Assembly “Bulgarian Democratic Center” of energy boss Hristo Kovachki, and later transferred to Nikolay Barekov's “Bulgaria without censorship”.
The Ministry of Interior found no evidence of violations
Should citizens believe the streams that were running throughout election day on social networks by election observers, or the Ministry of Interior, which announced that it found no evidence pointing to a crime related to vote buying in the village of Ognyanovo? The Municipal Election Commission, which also received various signals, did not find any violations.
Before the vote in the municipality of Pazardzhik, the police arrested four people suspected of election trading. One of them is a pastor in the neighborhood of Aleko Konstantinovo - and the mayor's grandson is on the list of the MRF-New Beginning. Regarding the lists and 15 thousand leva found in his home, Temenuzhka Ivanova from the village told bTV that the money was from the tithe for the church that people give.
If the results of the vote are not disputed, it will not only be a victory for the MRF-New Beginning, but also a defeat for democracy. When a controlled vote decides the fate of a city like Pazardzhik, we are not talking about elections, but about trading with the future.