Bulgaria Constitutional Court overrules election of 16 MPs, new party set to enter Parliament
Bulgaria’s Constitutional Court ruled on March 13 to partially invalidate the results of the October 27 2024 parliamentary results, naming 16 MPs whose election was overruled, and ordering the Central Election Commission to announce an updated seat distribution in the National Assembly.
The court said that the partial recount it ordered as part of investigating the merits of five separate complaints against the election results, found some discrepancies in the number and distribution of ballots reported after the election and the physical evidence.
As such, it earlier ordered the CEC to adjust the figures, including the four per cent threshold for entering Parliament. According to the updated data, cited in the Court’s decision, that threshold is just under 97 391 votes and Velichie, the party that fell narrowly short of clearing it at the initial count, was now over it after receiving 97 497 votes.
The court did not otherwise explicitly say that the party would enter Parliament as its ninth group, or how many MPs it would have. That number and the identity of the new MPs would have to be announced by the CEC.
The breakdown of the 16 seats lost by the eight erstwhile groups in the 51st National Assembly was as follows: GERB-UDF, ITN and Mech with three apiece, Vuzrazhdane and Delyan Peevski MRF-New Beginning with two each, while WCC-DB, BSP-United Left and Ahmed Dogan’s loyalists in ARF with one apiece.
Given that Velichie just cleared the four per cent threshold, it was expected to have only 10 MPs, meaning that six more seats would have to be redistributed among the other eight groups currently in Parliament.
The Court said that it decided to reject the requests to declare the October 2024 election fully void and decided against looking at a request to partially void the results.
The Court’s decision comes after several days of increased tension between state institutions, including a televised address from the Court’s president accusing prosecutors of attempting to sabotage its decision and accusations by parties currently in Parliament that the the Constitutional Court lacked transparency.
This prompted a protest against attempts to interfere in the Court’s process in the centre of Sofia on the evening of March 12, drawing several thousand people.
(Photo: Clive Leviev-Sawyer)
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