Bulgaria's PM Meeting Expats over Electoral Code Row

Bulgaria's Prime Minister Boyko Borisov at a Council of Ministers' meeting on May 04, 2016. Photo: BGNES

Prime Minister Boyko Borisov is meeting representatives of Bulgarian nationals living out of the country to dicsuss changes to election laws.

The talks are a response to the public outcry among Bulgarians abroad over amendments to the Electoral Code that severely restrict the number of polling stations outside Bulgaria.

Under the initial proposal, voting abroad could only take place in diplomatic missions, but the ruling axis backtracked.

Thursday's meeting has been proposed by National Ombudsman Maya Manolova, Focus News Agency reports.

Manolova on Wednesday was handed a petition with 6000 signatures calling for the restrictions to be revoked.

But Valeri Simeonov, the co-head of a nationalist coalition which backs the government and which had tabled the amendments, dismissed their actions, saying it was easy to collect that number of signatures.

Earlier this week he was involved in a row with a Bulgarian abroad campaigning against the amendments to whom he had sent a letter suggesting she should stop pestering MPs as they were trying to work on "serious" issues.

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