Bulgaria’s Central Election Commission (CEC) cannot change the results of the recent parliamentary elections despite indisputable video evidence of manipulation, the commission’s chairwoman Kamelia Neykova said on Sunday.

Over the past week, vote-buying and falsification of results in some constituencies in the recent parliamentary elections has become a major issue in Bulgaria. 

The pro-Russian radical party Velichie (Greatness) received 3.999% of the vote, just 29 votes short of the 4% needed to enter parliament. A few days after the results were announced, video footage from national broadcaster BNT showed that the party had been discriminated against in the ballot counting. 

However, the result in Velichie was not changed, favouring the leading party GERB of ex-prime minister Boyko Borissov. This gives Borissov more options to form a government. 

“Correction of results that are put down in the election document, based on violations shown by CEC footage, is not possible by law,” said the CEC’s chairperson. 

She added that Parliament should amend the law to allow for changes to the results, as this could happen in upcoming elections. 

Public broadcaster BNT investigated the elections in the municipality of Garmen in southwest Bulgaria. Video footage of the ballots being counted shows 262 votes for a particular political force, but more than 300 are needed. The national broadcaster says the video recording stops before the papers are filled in, but in the end, there are 100 more votes. 

It is suspected that the votes were given to MRF-New Beginning, led by businessman Delyan Peevski, who has been sanctioned by the US and the UK for corruption. MRF-New Beginning is the fourth largest political force in the country, with 11.5% of the vote. 

Former interior minister Ivan Demerdzhiev also participated actively in the post-election debate, providing statistics on more than 700 votes cast that were falsified in the vote count. 

“I can’t believe that there are such members of the sectional election commissions who, with a sense of impunity, do such things (electoral fraud), and the other members of the sectional commission don’t see what is happening in front of them anyway,” said Neikova. 

The Velichi party said that it would demand that the parliamentary elections be declared illegal, and the group received support from the populist There Is Such a People party, which entered parliament. 

On Thursday evening, Borissov, leader of Bulgaria’s leading party, GERB, promised EU ambassadors in Sofia that he would do everything in his power to form a government with a full mandate. 

Borissov thanked Hungarian ambassador Miklós Boros, whose country holds the EU presidency, for hosting the meeting. “During the meeting, I briefed the ambassadors on our reading of the results of the parliamentary elections. We discussed the opportunities for stabilising Bulgaria in all spheres of society and the challenges facing Bulgaria and Europe,” Borissov wrote on Facebook.

(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)

Source: Euractiv.com