site.btaTransparency International: General Aggravation of Election Process in Bulgaria

Transparency International: General Aggravation of Election Process in Bulgaria

Sofia, November 4 (BTA) - There has been a general aggravation of the election process in Bulgaria and worsening of the environment for holding elections, according to an analysis of the recent local elections in this country, prepared by Transparency International (TI) Bulgaria.

Presenting the analysis here Wednesday, political analyst and TI Bulgaria Board Chairman Ognyan Minchev spoke of serious worsening of the situation with controlled and bought votes, voter manipulations and use of administrative resources for guiding the election outcome one way or the other. "Ever since TI started monitoring the elections in 2009, these practices have been spreading despite the assurances of the political institutions that they would stop them," said Minchev.

The concept of elections as a reflection of the will of people about who and how should run the country, is steadily eroding, he added.

He argued that in the 1990s, with a younger and less experienced democratic system in Bulgaria, the representation of the will of Bulgarians during elections was much bigger than the representative value of the present political system.

"The cause is not just the worsening mechanisms and instruments for holding elections. The cause is a serious displacement of the political process directly concerning the elections, from systematic attempts to convince people to support a certain political programme to systematic attempts to force them, purchase their vote or otherwise direct them towards exercising their voting right to the benefit of a certain political player. Voting is becoming increasingly like shopping for one's groceries in an ordinary marketplace," Minchev said.

He believes that the concentration of power into a single party, GERB, is the result, among other things, of the decline of all other parties - save, maybe, the Reformist Bloc, the National Front for the Salvation of Bulgaria and the IMRO, which did slightly better than expected at the local elections. "It is exactly this decline of key political forces, which has caused over-concentration of municipal resources in the hands of GERB and will bring about the expansion of the GERB power pyramid into a system that might prove to be a latent autocracy," said the political analyst.