Bulgarian Socialist Leader Presents Documentary on 2011 Election Fraud

Socialist leader Sergey Stanishev (left) and MEP Ivaylo Kalfin presented Wednesday at the EP headquarters a documentary on election fraud in Bulgaria. Photo by BGNES

Socialist leader Sergey Stanishev presented Wednesday a documentary titled "How to win elections in Bulgaria" at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, stressing that the end-October 2011 campaign had been characterized by pressure, chaos and vote buying.

The 25-minute short film was shown to top journalists and MEPs from different political parties.

"Prior to the last round of elections in 2011, the vote had never been challenged. There was also an unprecedented number of fake ballots – as many as 300 000," the President of the Party of European Socialists (PES) and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) stated.

Stanishev cited data of polling agencies that 10% of the real votes had been driven by fear or vote-buying, stressing that Bulgaria had backpedalled on European democratic standards.

"To me and to BSP it is a key priority to prevent the biggest democratic value, democratic elections, from being taken away. We must not allow the pressure and manipulations from the last elections recur, because we have serious worries that the same methods will be applied on a bigger scale," Stanishev argued.

The socialist leader emphasized that the documentary was aimed at identifying the threats to the democratic system.

He suggested that the issue was an apt subject matter for monitoring by the EU institutions.

"If we cannot guarantee fair elections, then all of EU's democratic values cannot be applied," Stanishev noted.

"It is a common perception of Bulgarians that the last elections were not held in a democratic manner," MEP Ivaylo Kalfin stated at the presentation of the film.

"Democracy must never be taken for granted, but fought for," Kalfin stressed.

The 25-minute documentary presents an overall picture of fear, manipulations and vote buying, which the authors say accompanied the entire election campaign in the autumn of 2011.

The film was quick to stir a controversy, with the Bulgarian National Television (BNT) declaring that the documentary contained an investigation carried out by BNT used in a political context from which the state-owned TV channel preferred to distance itself.

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