Bulgarian Conservatives Demand Inquiry on Gabrovo Mayor Elections

Sirakov (second on the right) is the new mayor of Gabrovo. Photo by BGNES

The Bulgarian conservative party RZS doubts the accuracy of the results from the mayor elections in the city of Gabrovo.

Nikolay Sirakov from Bulgaria's ruling party GERB was elected the new mayor of Gabrovo after winning Satursday's elections.

The leader of the conservative Order, Law and Justice (RZS), Yane Yanev, announced Sunday that his party has found a discrepancy in the number of votes for Sirakov and insisted on runoff.

“We do not dispute the GERB candidate’s first position, only his electing in the first round,” Yanev said.

The RZS leader has provided the documents of the election for an investigation by a RZS team. The results will be known Monday. Then the conservative party will announce whether it will contest the election results in court.

“We have processed the documents for all 125 sectional reports and have found a discrepancy in 3 863 votes. This means that if the discrepancy we have found is true, Nikolay Sirakov from GERB was not going to be elected on the first round. With 1 201 less than the announced 9 330 votes, he had to go to runoff,” Yanev said.

The voting activity in Gabrovo was only 25.55%, which means that 1/4 of the people submitted their vote.

For Sirakov voted 57.38%, or 9 330 people. The second closest was the candidate of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, Nikolay Grigorov with 16%, Pencho Penchev of the conservative party RZS with 9.3%, Iva Nikolova of the rightist Blue Coalition with 7.4%, and Radi Stoyanov of the nationalist party Ataka with 3.8%.

The early mayor elections in Gabrovo had to be held after the previously elected mayor of the city Tomislav Donchev was appointed minister in charge of EU funds absorption in the Borisov government in March 2010.

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