Bulgaria’s Central Electoral Commission (CEC) has made it clear it would welcome observers for the presidential and local elections on October 23, 2011, if the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe decides to send any. “We are not afraid of being observed,” one of the CEC spokespersons, Biser Troyanov, stated Wednesday.
The CEC statement came in response of concerns raised Tuesday by the ethnic Turkish party DPS (Movement for Rights and Freedoms) whose Deputy Chair Lyutvi Mestan complained that the ruling center-right party GERB, the nationalist party Ataka and the opposition Bulgarian Socialist Party had been cooperating in order to eliminate DPS representatives from key positions in the municipal electoral commissions around the country. That is why, the DPS party demanded observers from the OSCE.
Ralitsa Negentsova, another of CEC’s spokespersons, did say that most of the heads of the 264 municipal electoral commissions around Bulgaria are representatives of the ruling party GERB.
The final deadline for the formation all of 264 municipal commissions for the presidential and local elections on October 23 is Thursday, August 18, 2011. Over 200 of the local bodies have already been put together, according to CEC.
Full Article: Bulgaria: Bulgaria’s Electoral Body Vows to Welcome OSCE Observers – Novinite.com – Sofia News Agency.