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With a concluding press-conference was finalized the realization of project “For democratic, transparent and fair elections”. The project has been implemented jointly with the Foundation for European and Progressive Studies (FEPS), Brussels.

The realization of the project activities confirmed the concerns that there is a trend for violation of the democratic electoral process. The analysis shows clearly: there is a deterioration of the election legislation’s quality. The election campaign becomes unfairer, manipulative, unequal. Besides the typical democratic practices influential factors in the campaign, the election day and results become also some economic, corporate and even criminal interests. The ruling party uses the state machine to gain supremacy in the election race.

The project activities include three components: monitoring of the election legislation, monitoring of the election campaign, events and media monitoring and monitoring of the election process.

The most frequently mentioned name of a politician during the examined period is the name of the Prime Minister Boiko Borissov. For the whole period his name has been registered 1164 times in the monitored print media and 63 times in the leading news of the main TV channels. The disproportion and inequality in this sense is enormous. Evidence for that is also the fact that the other political leaders have been registered as follows: Sergei Stanishev – 297 times in the print media and 10 times on TV; Volen Siderov – 177 timed in the print media and 6 on TV; Ahmed Dogan – 117 and 4; Ivan Kostov – 166 and 4; Martin Dimitrov – 106 and 1; Yane Yanev – 96 and 3.

The experts form the project team remind that during Elections 2011 we witnessed mass violations on the election day, during the first as well as during the second round of the elections and immediately after the end of the elections. The problem with the vote-buying was far from being the only typical election violation directly related to the day of electoral silence, the election day and the election results. Maybe fort he first time at this election has been noticed clearly a comparatively new tendency – mass presence of observers in numerous polling stations. A doubt has been raised what their real intentions have been and many experts concluded that this is maybe a new form of vote-buying when the observers themselves play the role of “brokers”.