site.btaProspective Lawmaker Bullied out of Her Party

Prospective Lawmaker Bullied out of Her Party

Sofia, October 15 (BTA) - A biology teacher who was elected to
the new Parliament on the ticket of the Bulgaria without
Censorship (BwC) party has decided to leave the party and serve
as an independent MP. Ana Barakova says she has received threats
from people who want her to give up her newly-earned
parliamentary seat, because she allegedly won it by mistake.

Barakova, who chairs the Plovdiv chapter of BwC's women's arm,
was number 13 on the party's election ticket in the southern
city during the October 5 early parliamentary elections.
However, she managed to oust the second candidate on the party
list, Dyako Dyakov, who is Deputy Chairman of BwC. Observers
speculate that this may have happened by mistake, because the
number 13 was also the number assigned to BwC on the
marked-choice ballots and it is possible that many voters who
technically "preferred" Barakova were actually voting for the
number 13 party, not the number 13 candidate.

Interviewed by Nova Television, Barakova said the threats she
has received show that the working environment in BwC is not
good.

"As soon as the elections were over, I was pressured and bullied
by frequent phone calls made by colleagues in the party who
wanted me to give up my parliamentary seat," she said. Those who
tried to contact her included the ousted candidate Dyako Dyakov
and Plovdiv-based businessman Martin Ivanov, who topped the BwC
ticket in the region. Barakova said the BwC people asked her to
exchange her seat in the national parliament for a local
government office in Plovdiv. One day she even found her
apartment broken into.

Asked whether her election could have been a mistake, Barakova
said: "My motivation and my desire have nothing to do with such
an attitude. I will not comment on that."

Barakova was in the Nova Television studio together with Haik
Garabedian and Krassimir Manov, both of whom left BwC after the
European elections in May. The two said that Barakova is a
respected teacher in Plovdiv and the votes she earned were most
likely the result of conscious choice.

BwC leader Nikolai Barekov was in Brussels and could not be
reached to comment on Barakova's defection. Speaking to the
Dnevnik daily, Dyako Dyakov, the ousted candidate, denied any
part in the bullying of Barakova and the attack on her
apartment.