Lyutvi Mestan, leader of Bulgaria's ethnic Turkish party Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), has argued that the newly uncovered attempt at manipulating the results of the May 12 parliamentary elections constitutes an attempted coup d'etat.

Mestan, as cited by Sega daily, called on the prosecuting authority to investigate whether the organizers of the scheme with the illegal 350 000 ballots had made an attempt to seize power in a coup.

"This is not dirty laundry but a finely staged coup attempt, an attempt to seize power through large-scale election-rigging," the DPS Chair stated.

He further recommended a probe into a potential organized crime ring featuring "misguided pollsters" who had predicted an impossible edge of 10-20% of center-right party GERB at the May 12 elections.

Suggesting that the illegal ballots might have already reached polling stations across the country, he demanded a comprehensive investigation and extra precautions by the regional and sectoral electoral commissions to prevent fraud.

Mestan urged caretaker Prime Minister Marin Raykov and President Plevneliev to explicitly state their support for the proposal of DPS in order to remove doubts about election fraud.

Late on May 10, a team of prosecutors and officers of the State Agency for National Security (DANS) stormed into a printing facility in the western town of Kostinbrod and seized a total of 350 000 ballots.

On Saturday, the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office confirmed that it had opened pre-trial proceedings for violation of secret ballot and manipulation of election results as defined in Art. 282 and Art. 169 of the Penal Code.

The SCPO informed that the inspection at the printing house of the Multiprint OOD company had uncovered a total of 350 000 ballots stored at the premises despite the fact that the firm had already fulfilled its contractual obligations to deliver the ballots to the local administrations by May 8.

The prosecuting authority assured that the extra ballots were stored under enhanced security measures.

The printing house is owned by Bonchev, municipal councilor in Kostinbrod from center-right party GERB.

Multiprint was awarded a public procurement contract worth around BGN 800 000 to print and deliver a total of 7.8 million ballots for the May 12 early elections.

The company was to print and deliver the ballots to the district administrations by May 8.

Approached by journalists of private TV station TV7 to comment on the probe, Bonchev denied that the authorities had seized illegal ballots.

He argued that DANS and the prosecuting authority had inspected the implementation of the public procurement contract.

Bonchev insisted that no ballots had been printed after May 8, adding that the probe had uncovered a pile of flawed ballots.

The inspection into the matter continues.

Bulgarians go to the polls on May 12 to elect a new Parliament.

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