site.btaProsecutor General Rejects DOST Coalition's Motion to Challenge Legitimacy of March 26 Elections

Prosecutor General Rejects DOST Coalition's Motion to Challenge Legitimacy of March 26 Elections

Sofia, April 13 (BTA) - Bulgaria's Prosecutor General Sotir Tsatsarov has rejected a motion by DOST Alliance leaders Lyutvi Mestan and Orhan Ismailov, entered a couple of weeks ago, to dispute the legitimacy of the March 26, 2017 early parliamentary elections by a reasoned petition to the Constitutional Court, the prosecution service said in a press release on Thursday.

"The votes gained by DOST would have been enough to enter parliament if a deliberately planned and aggressive campaign, or not just a campaign but rather anti-constitutional actions, were not launched against the party," Mestan said on March 28. "The entire State was harnessed against DOST: arrests and searches of party offices in Aytos, stopping buses, connivance with 'arrogators' at the border," he specified.

Tsatsarov, however, determined that there was no reason to believe that grave and omnipresent violations were committed leading to vitiation of the election process and its results. There is no reason to believe that violations were committed of a nature leading to a material distortion of the results and an impossibility to establish the voters' genuine will.

Tsatsarov also refused to approach the Constitutional Court about the legitimacy of the elections in two multi-member constituencies: Plovdiv and Vidin, about which he was alerted by candidates running for Parliament there.