site.btaPresident Radev Meets with OSCE Observation Mission for April 4 General Elections

March 23 (BTA) - Meeting with representatives of the
Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) here
on Tuesday, Bulgarian President Rumen Radev said: "Fair
elections are the most effective guarantee of democracy and as a
 society and institutions, we must work towards building
confidence in this instrument of the State governed by the rule
of law." The OSCE representatives are part of an international
election observation mission for Bulgaria's April 4
parliamentary elections, said the President's Press Secretariat.
 
Radev noted that this is the first time Bulgaria has been faced
with the challenge of holding elections amid an epidemic, and
recalled that he had held a series of consultations with the
institutions responsible for the election process, the health
authorities, the parliamentary and non-parliamentary parties,
civil organizations and representatives of the Bulgarian
communities abroad. The purpose of the meetings was to ensure
measures safeguarding the citizens' health and electoral rights,
 as well as a fair, transparent, and accessible election process
 so as to encourage the citizens' participation, said Radev.

The sides also discussed aspects of the organization and holding
 of the elections. The emphasis was on the conditions put in
place for quarantined people to exercise their constitutional
right to vote, organizing enough mobile voting sections, the
difficulties in processing the results of machine voting and
voting with ballot papers, safeguards against a large proportion
 of invalid ballot papers which was seen in previous elections,
the debate on introducing video monitoring of the ballot
counting and completion of the tally sheets, and the potential
for introducing remote voting for Bulgarians abroad.

Mission Leader Corien Jonker stressed that this is the ninth
OSCE election observation mission to Bulgaria which will not be
guided by comparisons with previous elections in this or other
countries but by the OSCE standards and criteria. RY/DD





/DT/