Bulgarian Ombudsman: Vote Void Will Lead to Chaos

Voiding election results is totally useless and will only stir chaos, says Bulgaria's Ombudsman, Konstantin Penchev.

On Thursday, the formerly-ruling centrist Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party, GERB, announced they want the results from the May 12 general elections voided over suspicions of vote rigging.

Speaking for bTV Friday morning, the Ombudsman said the current Constitution was such that it made contesting election results nearly impossible. He stressed the postulate that the Chief Prosecutor and the President must approach the Constitutional Court with a request to rule on the validity of the elections was absurd and must be amended.

Under the Constitution, the decision about the void can be made only by the Constitutional Court.

A political party has the right to ask annulment of election results, but only through the intermediation of five institutions – the President, the Supreme Court of Cassations, VKS, the Supreme Administrative Court, VAS, through their respective judges' plenum, the Chief Prosecutor, and at least one fifth of the sworn-in Members of the Parliament.

The latter is interpreted by the majority of legal experts as needing to have a convened Parliament in order for GERB to be able to ask the Constitutional Court for a void through its MPs.

However, the Ombudsman offered a different interpretation Friday morning, saying GERB MPs could do the move now, as the mandate starts on election day, not the date of the oath of office.

In commenting on the fact that both President, Rosen Plevneliev, and Chief Prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, have already firmly declared they do not see any need to annul the election results, Penchev said the situation was "schizophrenic."

He did admit Bulgarians did not have a day of reflection before the vote, but stressed breaches of the election process have happened before as well, and the latest ones were not as serious as to lead to a void of the results.

"We do not need a void. We are fed up with apocalyptic images – overthrows, wiretaps, recordings. We do not need chaos and instability. We need a Cabinet, any Cabinet," concluded the Ombudsman. 

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