Mounting support for calls for annulment of Bulgaria’s October elections
Support among parliamentary groups for the full or partial annulment of Bulgaria’s October 2024 early National Assembly elections is mounting.
At least 48 votes of the total 240 MPs are needed to appeal to the Constitutional Court, and of the groups that have spoken, that number seemingly has been exceeded.
The calls to overturn the election results in full or in part are based on alleged irregularities, including video recordings of the vote-tallying process that purportedly show misconduct by election officials.
Some of these recordings, required by election law, are missing or were turned off before the process was complete.
The chairpersons of the sectional election commissions, in which the video surveillance devices were not installed at all, to be fined. This was decided by the Central Election Commission at its meeting today.
Should an approach be made to the Constitutional Court, it will have two months to pronounce a ruling. The deadline to approach the court expires on November 14. It has not yet been announced when the 51st National Assembly will have its first sitting.
Mech, the smallest of the eight groups in the 51st National Assembly wanted the elections wholly annulled, while the second-smallest group, ITN, wants the annulment in respect of results in voting sections where manipulations have been proven.
Parliament’s second-largest group, the We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria coalition, which has 37 MPs, said at a news conference on November 4 that it would ask the Constitutional Court to check the election results and order a recount of the ballots.
WCC-DB’s Atanas Atanassov said that the goal was to conduct a comprehensive check of the results in each section to see whether there were irregularities.
As a result of this check, a decision should be made whether there should be a re-allocation of seats in the new Parliament.
WCC-DB’s Bozhidar Bozhanov said that the coalition’s analysis had identified a number of systemic problems, including the high percentage of invalid ballots.
“In nearly 5000 sections there are more than five per cen invalid ballots, in dozens of sections there is a voter turnout of over 80 per cent, and most of these votes are for one specific party,” Bozhanov said.
He said that many of the irregularities captured by video surveillance were outright crimes.
Parliament’s third-largest group, pro-Kremlin party Vuzrazhdane, which has 35 MPs, wants a recount of the votes.
The third-smallest group, Ahmed Dogan’s Alliance for Rights and Freedoms, said at a briefing that it wants President Roumen Radev to refer the elections to the Constitutional Court and the elections wholly annulled.
Boiko Borissov, leader of Parliament’s largest group, GERB-UDF, which has 69 MPs, asked at a news conference on November 4 if the partial annulment of the elections would change the result.
“Will this make it possible to form a government?” Borissov said.
“If so and the political parties declare their responsibility, I will say yes and give 69 MPs to sign to annull the elections,” he said.
Borissov told the news conference that if there was not enough support for his coalition’s candidate to be Speaker of the 51st National Assembly, he would not proceed to talks on forming a government. As Parliament’s largest group, GERB-UDF will be first to receive a cabinet-forming mandate.
Caretaker Minister of Innovation and Growth Rosen Karadimov, coordinator of government authorities on electoral issues, told a November 4 news conference: “All the problems that have arisen in recent days, related to complaints, disputes, comments, are related, and the arguments for them are drawn from the video surveillance”.
“This means that the video surveillance as a process, which covered more than 99 per cent of the polling stations, has fully ensured the fairness of the vote,” Karadimov said.
He said that in more than 98 per cent of the sections there was a video broadcast during the counting.
Broadcasting took place in 11 400 sections out of 11 626. In the previous elections, this percentage was 95 per cent, he said.
“Records are missing from 60 devices, mostly from small settlements,” Karadimov said.
(Archive photo: government.bg)
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