Bulgaria: Uncertainty lingers over election registrations of rival MRF factions
The opening day of registrations of parties for Bulgaria’s October early parliamentary elections was temporarily derailed by the dispute between the two factions of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), that loyal to honorary president Ahmed Dogan and that loyal to Delyan Peevski.
The dispute between the rivals as each faction sought to register as the MRF prompted an emergency meeting on September 2 of the Central Electoral Commission (CEC).
Closed to the media and not broadcast online, as has become customary for CEC meetings, the CEC meeting was held in the absence of the commission’s head, Kamelia Neikova, who has gone to Azerbaijan as an election monitor.
The drama at the CEC building on September 2 followed a weekend in which the Dogan and Peevski factions camped outside the building, seeking to be the first to register at the scheduled time of 9.30am on Monday morning.
Gendarmerie were deployed at the entrance to the building, and asked representatives of the two factions to keep clear the entrance, where also a large phalanx of reporters had gathered.
Reportedly, some MPs got into the CEC headquarters, which is inside the Party House currently being used for sittings of the National Assembly, by showing their MP cards and demanding that police allow them to enter their workplace.
Inside, people from one or another wing of the MRF took over desks in the CEC offices, preventing commission staff from starting work.
Peevski said that he had submitted an electronic registration of “MRF New Beginning” soon after midnight on September 2.
However, the Da Bulgaria party called into question the veracity of this claim, pointing out that the CEC did not have an electronic document submission system, even though the law required the commission to have one.
Though Dogan’s MRF has announced the expulsion from the party of Peevski and his allies, it would appear that on paper, the MRF continues to have two co-chairpersons: Peevski and Dogan loyalist Dzhevdet Chakurov.
Dogan loyalist Valentin Tonchev told reporters that he, along with MRF youth leader Ibraim Zaidenov, had been authorised to register the MRF with Dogan as its leader for the elections.
There is no registered party called MRF New Beginning. The court registration is of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms.
Procedurally, the CEC accepts documents for an application for registration in an election and then reviews them to check if they meet the requirements of election law. Approval of an application requires the approval of two-thirds of the members of the CEC.
CEC decisions are subject to appeal in the Supreme Administrative Court.
By the early afternoon of September 2, the process of CEC acceptance of applications for registrations of parties had not begun.
Meanwhile, this past weekend, there was a development in the contest over the residences in Rosenets and Boyana that had been used for many years by Dogan.
Dogan was reported to have vacated the Rosenets residence, of which Peevski loyalist Danail Papazov says he is the ultimate owner, after the electricity and internet were temporarily switched off.
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