Election monitoring

At its final session, the Civil Board discussed a Memorandum with recommendations to improve the electoral law in order to ensure fair and transparent elections. The document summarizes topics and issues, which the Board has studied at its meetings, its final version will be prepared within the next weeks.

The final meeting was attended by Katya Todorova, Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs; Philip Gounev, Deputy Minister of Interior; CEC members, as well as a representative of the National Security Agency and of the Prosecution.

Philip Gounev announced that the politicization of the Ministry of Interior /MoI/ seriously obstructs investigations concerning buying of votes. 877 signals for violations were received by MoI, at the same time the pre-trial proceedings until the present moment were just 80, he added.

A preliminary MoI analysis shows that at certain places there has been a decrease in the number of traded votes by about 30% compared to those of the previous elections. The representative of the Supreme Cassation Prosecution Emilia Peneva noted that the prosecution had set the aim to study every signal connected to a violation or possible crimes in the electoral process. She also gave credit to the effective coordination between the activities of the Prosecutor's Office, the Ministry of Interior, the National Security Agency and the Prosecution.

Grounds for discussion, but with no the final statement of the Board, was also the type of the electoral system.