PACE Mission Requests Monitoring in Bulgaria

The PACE mission observing the parliamentary elections in Bulgaria will put forward that the organization renews the process of monitoring for Bulgaria. Tadeusz Ivinski, head of the delegation of observers for the parliamentary elections explained: "Our impression is that the results from the vote reflect the will of the people and that is indeed the essence of democracy", Focus Agency reported.

If PACE renews the procedure for monitoring in Bulgaria there would be more frequent monitoring missions in the country presenting reports about Bulgaria and about whether it performs its duties as a member of PACE. "Do not regard the monitoring as a sanction which puts Bulgaria in an unfavorable position", professor Ivinski said.

There was a small group of observers and although they did not become witness of vote buying, they noted that information about buying of votes was widespread.
"Those were statements we heard which were constantly repeated. Thus I can accept that there is some truth behind those statements. We believe that those statements are so widespread that they discredit the results from the vote", Ivinski said.

According to him Bulgaria needs to fight vote buying. "It is to be regretted that in Western Europe Bulgaria is associated with corruption and buying of votes" the head of the PACE mission said. "This is a cliché about your country. There is not a single country in the world where there is no corruption but in your country it has to be reduced to a minimum", he pointed out.

The mission gave concrete recommendations about electoral legislation and the electoral process in Bulgaria. "Changes in the electoral legislation need to be done a year before the date of the elections. This gives rise to restrictions and to unacceptable organization of the elections" prof. Tadeusz Ivinski said. "We are not happy with the obvious lack of public confidence in the electoral system and the widely known practices of vote buying", he explained.

According to the observers Central Electoral Committee as a politically neutral commission could increase its confidence. The foreign observers are of the opinion that the commission had difficulties in giving timely instructions to the Regional Electoral Committee.

The observers recommend that the provisions of the electoral legislation be consolidated. According to them 31 of the majority voting districts have a big difference in their population and a big difference in the number of voters in the various districts discredits the concept of equality.

The PACE mission is of the opinion, that giving immunity and ceasing criminal prosecution for candidates for MPs is not right. The conclusions of the delegation indicate that media in Bulgaria have freedom of expression, the press provides a broad range of opinions.

A lot of Bulgarians abroad turned to PACE representatives in order to alert them that they have nowhere to vote, that the constituencies are very far away. According to the observers, the country should improve the organisation in establishing constituencies abroad.

Furthermore, corporate controlled voting is far more difficult to note since people do not have ways to react to that kind of influence.