PM: Mass address re-registrations to sway elections to be cancelled

Bulgarian Prime Minister Boiko Borissov has told his GERB party to accept a proposal by the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party to cancel address registrations made illegally to influence the outcome of mayoral and municipal elections coming in the autumn.

This emerged during question time in the National Assembly on June 3.

Borissov was responding to a question from BSP MP Maya Manolova, who at the time of the 2013/14 now-departed ruling axis was the driver of electoral legislation that has run into severe criticism for its several flaws.

He said that a few weeks ago, he had assigned Interior Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Roumyana Buchvarova to order checks of addresses where there were sudden increases in the number of residents.

The mass registrations have been the subject of several media reports, as have checks by police and municipal officials who have been going door-to-door in certain municipalities, to ascertain whether “new arrivals” actually live there.

One such report recently showed an elderly woman, on being questioned by police, expressing bafflement and suspicion on being told that dozens of people had registered as living at her address – especially because, as she explained, she lived alone.

Borissov said that on June 4, along with Reformist Bloc parliamentary group co-leader Radan Kanev, he would meet with heads of printing houses to discuss the problem of ballot-printing.

Earlier, it emerged that the Bulgarian National Bank printing works would not be able to cope with the task of printing ballots for the October mayoral and municipal elections. The Reformist Bloc has suggested that at least part of the task be outsourced to printing houses in Romania.

(Photo: Rama)

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