Bulgarian Electoral Body: No Reason to Cancel Vote

Central Electoral Committee member Krasimira Medarova. Photo by BGNES

The results of Bulgaria’s May 12 general election should not be canceled, according to a member of the country’s electoral body.

There are “no legal grounds” for the Central Electoral Committee to declare that violations of occurred on the day of reflection before the vote, according to Committee member Krasimira Medarova .

Medarova’s comment followed the surprising request made by former PM Boyko Borisov that the election results be canceled by the Constitutional Court.

Borisov, whose center-right GERB party narrowly won the election, announced Thursday that GERB will appeal to the constitutional court and seek the cancellation of the election due to “a gross violation of the law in the day before the vote."

Borisov claimed that his party's chances had been damaged by allegations that it was about to commit voting fraud.  He referred to the overnight raid of the Bulgarian prosecuting authority and the State Agency for National Security at a printing house on the eve of Election Day, during which a total of 350 000 illegal ballots were seized.

The printing house is owned by a GERB municipal councilor, which prompted opposition parties to accuse GERB of an attempted voting fraud. The parties thus allegedly broke the mandatory pre-election silence on Saturday.

However, Medarova has now pointed out that, even though political parties did comment on the illegal ballot scandal last Saturday, their comments could not be qualified as illegal campaigning, since they did not openly urge people to vote for them.

Borisov said Thursday that failure to get a cancellation of the vote would oblige him to propose a minority cabinet, even though he said he knows this will fail. All other parties that overcame the election threshold have declared they would not cooperate with GERB, which won 97 seats in the country’s 240-seat Parliament.

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