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Bulgaria Main Party Plays Victim, Firm to Void Election Result

Politics » ELECTIONS 2013 | May 17, 2013, Friday // 20:20
Bulgaria: Bulgaria Main Party Plays Victim, Firm to Void Election Result Bulgaria’s former Prime Minister Boyko Borisov is pictured here speaking in his first public appearance since the vote on Thursday, vowing to ask the constitutional court to cancel the election results. Photo by Sofia Photo Agency

Bulgaria's biggest political party is determined to have the result of Sunday's deadlocked election cancelled, saying the energy mafia is its true enemy.

"Gerb [the formerly ruling party, ousted by mass protests in February] hurt the interests of Bulgaria's organized crime and energy mafia. Now they are striking back in revenge and we feel the pain," Ivaylo Moskovski, former transport minister in the cabinet of Boyko Borisov, told bTV channel on Friday.

"This is a plot, well thought-out and planned well in advance, aiming to destroy Gerb," the former minister said.

The party, which gained a slight lead in the early elections, but not enough to form a stable minority government, wants the results voided on the grounds of a legal violation.

On Saturday, a day before the elections, when by law electoral campaigning is forbidden, prosecutors announced they had raided a printing shop and found 350,000 illegally printed ballots in a printing house owned by a Gerb official.

The party claims its chances had been hurt by news conferences held by other parties in relation to the raid on Saturday.

"Once the new parliament is convened, we will take advantage of every opportunity we have to press ahead with cancelling the vote results.

We have hundreds of articles and broadcasts, which violated the rules. All they will be part of our case that the electoral process has been marred and must start anew," Moscovski argued.

Under the Constitution, the decision about the void can be made only by the Constitutional Court.

A political party has the right to ask annulment of election results, but only through the intermediation of five institutions - the President, the Supreme Court of Cassations, VKS, the Supreme Administrative Court, VAS, through their respective judges' plenum, the Chief Prosecutor, and at least one fifth of the sworn-in Members of the Parliament.

The latter is interpreted by the majority of legal experts as needing to have a convened Parliament in order for GERB to be able to ask the Constitutional Court for a void through its MPs.

However, the country's ombudsman offered a different interpretation Friday morning, saying GERB MPs could do the move now, as the mandate starts on election day, not the date of the oath of office.

In commenting on the fact that both President, Rosen Plevneliev, and Chief Prosecutor, Sotir Tsatsarov, have already firmly declared they do not see any need to annul the election results, Penchev said the situation was "schizophrenic."

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