OSCE Observers to Monitor Bulgaria's Elections

A team of twenty-two monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is to oversee the forthcoming early elections on October 5.

This is the eight time in a row that the organization is to sent observers for a vote in Bulgaria. The deployment comes at the request of the Bulgarian Interior Ministry, Novinite's Bulgarian-language website reports.

OSCE's basic team will include 12 Sofia-based experts, with ten other people to be later allocated across the country.

Observers will thus be 10 times less this year than at the last elections in May 2014.

Audrey Glover, who heads the mission, explained both the election process and the run-up are to be scrutinized.

The organization also reiterated some of its recommendations to Bulgaria that it says have not been put to practice.

It has often urged authorities to allow mother-tongue campaigning (acceptable only in Bulgarian under the law), a move supported mostly by the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), but rejected by other major parties.

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