site.bta Populist Voting Prevailed in Last Election Campaign - Analysts

Populist Voting Prevailed in Last Election Campaign - Analysts

Sofia, May 18, (BTA) - Populist voting prevailed in the last campaign, Transparency International Bulgaria CEO Kalin Slavov told a BTA-hosted news conference Thursday. Slavov added that the main topics around the elections were refugees and social policy, but no one included measures against lobbying in their programme.

Organizational violations amounted to about 80 per cent, Slavov said. These were followed by various forms of controlled voting, which were over 18 per cent.

Vanya Nousheva, in turn, said there were cases of employers giving food or bonuses to their employees in addition to salaries. Besides, the voting in some sections was photographed. The latest election campaign was also characterized by "black PR" aimed at certain runners, conducted by a certain media group which also released a book free of charge on the market.

The persons present in the polling places were not designated clearly. This is one of the established violations. There were omissions with sealing the ballot papers and things developed to the point of preliminary filling in of the sheets.

Katya Hristova said that only one-fourth of the parties have a clearly defined section about fighting corruption in their programmes.

The increase of controlled voting in Bulgarian elections continues, said Ognyan Minchev of the association. There are no institutional guarantees against faking the counting of the ballot papers, he added. Misuse of corporate power is another problem, in his opinion.