Bulgarian President Plevneliev says will not veto last-minute changes to election laws
Bulgarian President Rossen Plevneliev said on October 27 that he would not veto the last-minute changes to the Electoral Code approved by Parliament the previous day, but would act to ensure they were promulgated as quickly as possible.
Plevneliev said that it was more important to have stability and sustainability of the electoral process in the days before the election.
Bulgaria goes to the polls on November 6 2016 in the first round of an election to choose a successor to Plevneliev as head of state. There are 21 candidates, with Plevneliev not among them, having said several months ago that he would not make himself available to be a candidate for a second term.
Bulgaria’s National Assembly approved on October 26 the second reading of amendments to the Electoral Code, including a provision to count in the “I don’t support anyone” option on the ballot paper as part of the final results, and a provision to scrap in European Union countries the limit on the number of polling stations that may be opened in a foreign country.
Plevneliev said that he would not be the one to impose a veto on the new amendments because at such a crucial moment he did not want to add instability to the process.
“These changes may not be ideal, but as head of state my argument is about something else – I have always called for stability,” he said.
Plevneliev took a sideswipe at the field of candidates, saying that in his address to the nation at the start of the official campaign ahead of the 2016 presidential elections, he had posed a number of questions to the candidates, yet there was still a “deficit of answers”.
The questions he had put related to the crisis in Europe, the migration and terrorism crises, crises in the country had how each candidate would work for the stability and development of the nation.
Plevneliev urged the candidates, in the days remaining before the election, to respond to these issues.
/Politics
