Peculiarities of the Bulgarian Democracy
Ladislav Tsvetkov*, June 10, 2009
Central Electoral Commission: There's no such procedure!
In Bulgarian legislation there's no procedure that would allow a second manual vote count for the European elections. Only the Constitutional court may rule out the procedure but to do that, the court must be referred to by 1/5 of the MPs, by the president, the Council of Ministers, the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court. Beside the fact that there's no legal basis for a second vote count, the Central Electoral Committee announced that there is no reason for this procedure either, what the request of the Blue coalition and LIDER was.
The situation, on the one hand, looks hopeless, but it's not. There is a solution and it is the Parliament to convene for an extraordinary session and to vote the relevant changes so that this legal vacuum to be filled in, including to put an end to the unnecessary hardships of parties, courts, state bodies, the Central Electoral Committee and to all for whom the adjustment of the election results in a very specific way creates problems and expenses. For almost 100 years there is an Election Law. It is clear, comprehensive and, most of all, absolutely applicable today, 100 years later. The author of the Law is Aleko Konstantinov (famous Bulgarian writer from the early 20th century). He is also famous with his leftist views which nowadays looks another good premise the text to be approved.
In the Bulgarian version here follows the text of the Law, which euinside decided not to translate. But the public debate about the creation of a general Election code is going on for years but no government so far has decided to take this brave step so far because this might cause political oblivion for some parties (not of the editor).
*Ladislav Tsvetkov is a reporter with the news television Re:TV (www.retv.bg)