Vote-buying was a major concern in Bulgaria’s parliamentary elections, with President Rumen Radev calling on prosecutors and police to respond immediately to reports of electoral crimes.
“How is it possible that the multiplying signals and examples of bought and manipulated votes are visible to everyone, but remain outside the attention of the responsible institutions?” Radev said on Thursday.
The president demanded information on whether mayors and criminals were involved in controlling elections in small towns and Roma neighbourhoods, where people are particularly vulnerable to such influence.
“Who is the political force, and who is the political leader who uses such ugly practices? I expect convincing answers from the caretaker government, particularly from the Interior Ministry and the security services,” said Radev.
According to him, “Bulgarian citizens have every right to know in whose interests their institutions are working and whether someone is infiltrating the National Assembly through vote-buying, threats, and racketeering.”
“There can be neither bought nor forced democracy,” he added.
In the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s parliamentary elections, the pro-European coalition We Continue the Change—Democratic Bulgaria (PP-DB), the second-largest political force in the country with 14.3%, directly accused Delyan Peevski, who has been sanctioned by the US and Britain for corruption, of large-scale vote buying.
MRF-New Beginnings, the formation of Delyan Peevski, won 11.5% of the vote, with a particularly strong showing in areas with ethnic Turks, Romnd in some towns in north-west Bulgaria where the standard of living is low. PP-DB commented that there was no way that Peevski, whose rating is close to zero, could become the country’s fourth political force without a controlled and bought vote.
Bulgarian MEP and ALDE co-chair Ilhan Kyuchyuk, who until four months ago was in the same party as Peevski (MRF), also speaks of large-scale vote buying.
“It all started with promises by Peevski that mayors would spend state money, and then arrests started. There are hundreds of cases in which our people have reported intimidation to state authorities. All the myths and legends we told them three to four months ago about the Peevski model turned out to be true,” Kyuchyuk said.
On Thursday, caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev said that the police had done a good job organising the election.
Before the elections, the pro-European coalition PP-DB handed the police lists compiled by the unofficial hacker community BG-Elves. They contained hundreds of names of people who organised vote-buying across Bulgaria. The police replied that they included people who had died or were outside Bulgaria.
Kostadin Kostadinov, leader of the pro-Russian radical Revival party, also predicted that there would be huge vote-buying and that a government would be formed in Sofia because there was no more money to buy votes.
Later on Thursday, MRF-New Beginnings leader Delyan Peevski also called on the institutions to say whether there were cases of bought or corporate votes in the last elections.
“As the leader of the MRF, representing nearly 300,000 voters – Bulgarians, Turks, Pomaks and Roma, I expect convincing answers from the representatives of the caretaker government, the Interior Ministry, as well as the security services, to immediately inform whether there are cases of bought or corporate vote, influence on and through representatives of local authorities or businesses, which should be investigated with all the rigour of the law,” Peevski said.
The businessman, politician and former media mogul, who has been sanctioned by the US and the UK for corruption, also said he was worried because the public was not getting satisfactory answers and distrust of the state was growing.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)
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