Comment by Emilia Milcheva:
The democratic electoral process in Bulgaria is at risk and the freedom to vote must be protected. This is the message behind the demands to count election results already in the first week after the vote on October 27, and the champions of fair and transparent elections turned out to be more than one and two. If the initiatives achieve their goal, certain political forces will reap dividends, and for Bulgaria, as a member of the EU, the consequences will be political instability and a deteriorated reputation before the international community.
Cancellation of elections may be requested for suspected irregularities, and this may only apply to individual sections that may affect the final allocation of mandates or the outcome of elections in a particular area.
Who wants to checkout
The first cashing requests came from “Majesty” - the party whose 0.001% did not reach to pass the 4 percent threshold for parliament. Support for cashing out was also expressed by the civil association BOEC, as well as by a civil initiative related to the MIR party, which left the coalition with the BSP because of Delyan Peevski-related politicians in the lists. President Rumen Radev criticized the elections, declared fair by the official cabinet, but without using the term “cashing”.
It was done on Sunday by the leader of one of the political forces represented in the parliament “There is such a people” (ITN) Slavi Trifonov with a message that already on the first day of the 51st parliament they will initiate a collection of signatures in order to submit a complaint to the Constitutional Court (CS) for the partial annulment of the elections. And a high wave arose in social networks: why partially, and not completely, since this is the election model in Bulgaria, the falsifications are massive, the legal and ethical standards - violated, therefore the vote is dishonest. From there to the eighth parliamentary elections in the spring, the road is short.
How politicians woke up
After ITN signals also came from the PP-DB, which did not express a definite position in support of the cashing, although they based their campaign on the well-founded assumptions of vote manipulations. Atanas Atanasov, leader of DSB - part of PP-DB, stated on Nova TV that he did not consider the elections to be fair. “From this it follows that it is quite possible to seek cassation, the point is that we do not have such judicial practice”. And the co-chairman of “We continue the change” Asen Vasilev also stated that a request to count the vote would not be useful if the Ministry of Internal Affairs did not collect evidence in the campaign itself. To cash in “national elections” lawyer and MECH leader Radostin Vassilev spoke - because of “unprecedented buying of votes by Delyan Peevski and his group”. The smallest parliamentary group has 12 deputies.
ITN's move with cashing is tactical - “Greatness” would not find allies for its demand for withdrawal, while for ITN there is a better chance of securing 30 MPs to join its 18 to refer to the SC. In addition, Trifonov's party could choose the sections to be checked - whether some of those with the seized by “Majesty” votes or for manipulations in favor of “DPS-Novo Nachalo”.
In his post on Facebook, with which he announced the initiative, Trifonov does not specifically name which sections these will be, he only says “certain electoral sections that are part of the journalistic materials, as well as to check the vote in sections where the video surveillance was absent”. However, he names “one material in particular by BNT journalist Milena Kirova”, which showed that at least 28 of the votes for “Greatness” are allocated to other formations - and the party did not reach 21 votes for the parliament.
The most egregious violations of the vote were seen in Blagoevgrad district, where on election day it turned out that 3,000 members of sectional election commissions (SEC) were replaced, and every second SEC protocol was wrong. Footage from video surveillance of sections in the area showed how in Garmen, for example, there is a difference of a hundred votes between the recording and what was noted in the protocol, so “Krasi” to fulfill his “order”. In Belica, a member of the SEC was filmed filling out blank ballots. And of these shashmi, 8 and 18 benefited (“DPS-New Beginning” and GERB-SDS).
What's happening
Thus, Trifonov's party will position itself as a political force defending the fairness of the vote - “finally, one should do it”, exclamations are heard. And if you add the request of ITN to purge the voter lists of "dead souls", it looks like preemptive taking of positions. This problem has been around for more than a decade, but parliaments have never dealt with it.
PP-DB give their consent to this initiative, as in return ITN will support their declaration to create a “sanitary cordon” around Delyan Peevski and “Novo Nachalo”, “which represent a risk for democracy in Bulgaria”. Support for the declaration, understandably, is also given by Peevski's political rival - the “Alliance for Rights and Freedoms”, the so-called authentic DPS of Ahmed Dogan.
Although from “Revival” and BSP-United Left claim that their votes were stolen from them too, they do not declare themselves to be counting the votes. They are skeptical, since the next elections would be held according to the same rules, and for “Revival” Ivelin Mihailov's party is a “Scientology sect with a real vote of 2%”.
But the cashing request also looks more like an image campaign than a real defense of the electoral process.