Opposition and non-Parliamentary political parties in Bulgaria raised serious concerns about the fairness of the forthcoming early or regular elections for 45^th National Assembly. According to the latest amendments to the Election Code, the next parliamentary elections are to be held with the use of both voting machines and paper ballots.

“We have serious concerns that the forthcoming elections will be manipulated. That is why we insist that as many observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) monitor the next elections - Nayden Zelenogorski, Leader of non-Parliamentary political party said in an interview for BNR.

"In our view, currently there are many harmful practices used in Bulgaria’s election process. A survey of the international organization Transparency International shows that vote buying and “corporate” voting account for nearly 23% of the votes cast on elections in Bulgaria. If we add 15% invalid ballots cast on the latest local elections, we come to the conclusion that 40% of the ballots are either manipulated or cast under pressure”, Zelenogorski further contends.

As a result, several non-Parliamentary political parties announced that they were committed to monitoring the election process and ensuring fairness of voting with the help of volunteers in nearly 12,000 polling stations across the country. Although this mission seems almost impossible for smaller parties, it can be fulfilled, if citizens join forces with part of the non-Parliamentary political forces and establish a common network of election observers. Bulgaria’s former Ombudsman and current leader of Izpravise.BG civil platform Maya Manolova has already began working on the creation of such network. One year ago, Maya Manolova herself said she was a victim of election manipulations by the ruling party during the mayoral elections when she ran for mayor of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia. Later, she referred the results of the local elections to court. In Maya Manolova’s words, the election code contains a special procedure concerning the registration of observers and supporters of political parties, as well as their rights in the sectional, municipal and regional election commissions:

“We are to nominate and register observers together with other political forces. We are also planning to send citizens to register as supporters for certain candidate - Maya Manolova said in an interview for BNR. – They will all have the opportunity to publish the protocol with the election results from a given polling station on an Internet platform. Thus, every Bulgarian citizen will be able to receive real-time information about the results in their polling station. This would allow us to make a parallel count and know the election results perhaps even before the Central Electoral Commission.”

The lack of voting machines is the biggest threat to the forthcoming Parliamentary elections, Maya Manolova contends.

“The government is doing its best to sabotage the purchase or the rental of voting machines and want to count the ballots and make section protocols again by hand”, Maya Manolova explains.

Maya Manolova has assured that she would not participate at the forthcoming elections in coalition with the party of TV showman Slavi Trifonov and the representatives of the Toxic Trio which have been organizing the antigovernment protests in Bulgaria in the past 110 days. In her view, their common actions are only driven by their desire to guarantee fair and transparent elections with real election results.

“That is why, all actions related to the provision of a network of observers, web site, parallel vote count and team of lawyers will happen outside the headquarters of the political parties ”- Bulgaria’s former Ombudsman contends.

Compiled by: Yoan Kolev

English version: Kostadin Atanasov