Bulgaria's Election Body Frowns at "Jailed Nurses for MEPs" Idea

Politics » BULGARIA IN EU | March 20, 2007, Tuesday // 00:00
Bulgaria: Bulgaria's Election Body Frowns at "Jailed Nurses for MEPs" Idea Bisser Troyanov, spokesman of the central electoral body, explained the newly accepted MEP laws wouldn't allow the jailed nurses to vote in those elections, let alone be nominees. Photo by Yuliana Nikolova (Sofia Photo Agency)

Officials from the Central Election Committee firmly objected to the recently hatched idea that the five nurses, jailed in Libya, are nominated for MEPs in Bulgaria's first upcoming elections for European parliamentarians.

The idea gained further momentum last week after the nurses and the only acquitted defendant in the HIV trial, doctor Zdravko Georgiev, warmly embraced it.

Speaking at their first press conference, the officials from the Central Election Committee explained that the newly accepted MEP laws wouldn't even allow them to vote in those elections, let alone be nominees. Meanwhile citizens from Bulgaria's seaside city of Varna started gathering signatures in support of nominating the five Libya-jailed Bulgarian nurses as MEP candidates.

The law states that only Bulgarians who have lived in the country or in a EU member state in the three months prior to the election would be able to vote.

Another requirement is that at least five initiative committees should be formed to nominate each of the nurses.

Election results will be determined in accordance with the mathematical proportion method. Under the so-called "Hare-Niemeyer" method the number of valid ballots cast in the vote is divided by the number of Bulgaria's MEPs - eighteen. The new method will be promulgated on Friday. The parties are entitled to appeal the method within three days.

The law gives voters a new extra, which allows them to indicate preferences to one of the candidates. The so-called preferential vote will be implemented for the first time in Bulgaria.

The five Bulgarian nurses have spent the past eight years jailed in a Libya jail and this prevents them from taking part in the upcoming May 20 elections. They have been accused of deliberately starting a HIV epidemic in the children's hospital ward in Benghazi.

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