site.btaMedia Review: October 30

OCTOBER 29 LOCAL ELECTIONS

On Monday, all newspapers and online news outlets cover extensively the local elections in Bulgaria which took place on Sunday, October 29.

Bulgarians voted for 265 municipality mayors, 35 borough mayors (24 in Sofia, six in Plovdiv and five in Varna), 3,041 mayoralty mayors, and 5,053 municipal councilors. Since the previous local elections in 2019, legislation has been amended to lower the population threshold qualifying a settlement for a mayoralty to 100 from 350 before. As a result of this, 3,041 small settlements or 2,073 more than the 1,968 in 2019 elected a mayor of their own instead of having an appointed lieutenant mayor. Balloting took place in 12,299 voting sections countrywide, including 442 mobile sections at hospitals, prisons and hospices.

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In a headline, the Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) sums up that eight of Bulgaria's regional centres have elected their mayors in the first round, while the remaining 19 will have runoff elections. 24 Chasa covers the same topic, quoting BNR.

In Burgas, Dimitar Nikolov (GERB) will be mayor again, winning a fifth consecutive term in office (receiving 60.42% of the votes with 72.81 of ballots counted).

Zhivko Todorov of GERB wins the mayoral race in Stara Zagora once again, receiving 53.26% of the votes (some 30% of ballots counted).

Pernik mayor Stanislav Vladimirov and Vratsa mayor Kalin Kamenov (GERB) have also been re-elected. Vladimirov receives 81.28% of the votes with 60.38% of the ballots counted and Kalinov – 67.29% with 70.45% of ballots counted.

Erol Myumyun of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms becomes Kardzhali’s new mayor by receiving 57.14% of the votes with 52.89% of the ballots counted.

Zlatko Zhivkov of GERB wins the mayoral race in Montana once again, receiving 59.16% of the votes (54.07% of ballots counted).

Valentin Revanski has been re-elected Yambol mayor with 79.15% (100% of ballots counted).

Targovishte mayor Darin Dimitrov of GERB has also been re-elected, receiving 68.45% (77.86% of ballot counted).

On November 5, there will be run-offs in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna, Ruse, Veliko Tarnovo, Blagoevgrad, Gabrovo, Kyustendil, Lovech, Pazardzhik, Pleven, Haskovo, Silistra, Shumen, Smolyan, Sliven, Razgrad, Vidin and Dobrich.

All news outlets cover the preliminary results of the first round of the local elections. CEC is yet to reveal the conclusive results, as not all the voting ballot have been counted at this point.

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Mediapool.bg reports that after the first round of the local elections GERB is still the most influential party, but that influence decreases, compared to the local elections in 2019. GERB now has only five mayors of regional centres elected in the first round. In 2019, that number was eight.

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Paper ballots only were used after the Central Election Commission (CEC) Friday eliminated voting machines over security breach allegations. On Saturday, protesters gathered in front of one of Parliament's buildings in central Sofia which houses the Central Election Commission (CEC), insisting that the CEC hold an extraordinary meeting to revoke its decision banning machine voting for the local elections. Eight appeals have been lodged against CEC’s decision with the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC), but the Court said it cannot consider the matter before Monday, October 30.

Commenting CEC's decision to eliminate the voting machines, CEC Spokesperson Rositsa Mateva told BNR that she felt no guilt about this decision as she is also a convinced supporter of the voting machines. "The decision we took on Friday night was the only right decision, given the situation and the information [from the State Agency National Security’s (SANS) report containing data that suggest distrust in the electoral process and compromising the machine voting] that we received," she said. According to her, if the CEC had not taken that decision, its members would have been accused of rigging the electoral process. "In making that decision, we knew that in either case we would suffer criticism," Mateva explained, adding that there should be no problem voting by machines in the local elections’ runoff next weekend if the SAC makes that decision by then.

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Speaking on BNR, political scientist Prof. Milena Stefanova said that the scandal with CEC’s decision to eliminate the machine voting had an impact on the elections in Sofia, mobilizing the voters of the Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) coalition. However, a similar effect was not observed in the rest of the polling stations in the country. "On Saturday, after the scandal that started on Friday, I communicated with a lot of people in the country and they were not moved about the fact that they would not be voting by machines," Stefanova said. In her words, it is difficult to predict the results of local elections because most people vote according to their party affiliation, but sometimes citizens are not happy with their party’s mayoral candidate and significant differences in the votes for the party list and the mayoral candidate may occur.

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Commenting on the upcoming mayoral runoff in Sofia, which will most likely oppose Vassil Terziev (CC-DB - Save Sofia) and Vanya Grigorova (BSP-led coalition), sociologist Andrey Raychev told BNR that Terziev’s victory is yet uncertain, although the exit polls give him an advantage of some 10%. According to Raychev, this is a gap which can be closed in the runoff.

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In a bTV interview, political scientist Svetoslav Malinov said that GERB leader Boyko Borissov is to be blamed for the party’s shameful result in Sofia, as he personally imposed Anton Hekimyan as their candidate. According to latest data, Hekimyan will not collect enough votes to reach the runoff in Sofia on November 5. "Borissov's personal involvement with Anton Hekimyan’s candidacy was felt during the [election] campaign, although he did not stand closely by the candidate. There was a feeling that Borissov had solely imposed this candidate on GERB-Sofia, depriving it [the party’s structure in Sofia] of a natural candidate," Malinov explained. "GERB is losing ground. CC-DB will come out very strong from such elections, not because they beat GERB, but because they are making a breakthrough in local government in general. This [CC-DB] is a coalition that did not exist in the previous elections. Starting from a very low base, it will now cover the country with [municipal] councillors, mayors in small towns and, in some places, mayors in big cities" the political scientist emphasized.

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Dnevnik.bg reports that it has been a long night of work at Arena Sofia, where the voting papers from the capital's section election commissions were handed over to the municipal election commission, there. Some 5,000 members of 1,640 section election commissions waited in long queues until the early hours of the morning to hand in their sacks of ballot papers. The counting of the voting ballots for municipal councillors was the slowest. Municipal Election Commission Chair Polina Vitanova told Dnevnik.bg that it is not yet clear what is the proportion of invalid voting ballots. This will become known when all the tally sheets are processed, she added.

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Interviewed by Trud, Prof. Mihail Konstantinov - mathematician and former long-time member of CEC, says that the clash between the CEC and the Council of Ministers over the elimination of the voting machines has damaged the credibility of the electoral process. “The Council of Ministers told CEC that it acted illegally, while CEC advised the Council of Ministers not to interfere in their work. This is absolutely unacceptable. I did not think that Bulgaria could bring itself to such a pathetic level”, Konstantinov stresses. He believes that the abolition of machine voting in these local elections is the first step to abolish machine voting in Bulgaria entirely in the future. "We still have to wait for the decision of the SAC, which has said it will start considering the case as of Monday. Currently, the fate of machine voting, at least in the near future, is in the hands of the SAC”, he explains.

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Nova TV’s morning show also offered coverage on the first round of the local elections. Sociologist Elena Dragieva said that in Sofia Vanya Grigorova had collected the so-called ‘protest vote’ vote and her performance was not a surprise (leftist Grigorova from the BSP-led coalition will most likely meet rightist Vassil Terziev (CC-DB - Save Sofia) in the runoff election. Terziev leads the race with some 31% against 22% for Grigorova). "Some two fifths of the people who vote in Sofia were not born in the capital, they do not carry Sofia’s past and experience with themselves, they do not remember the ‘blue’ [democratic] rallies. Those are Sofia’s new residents, they have different problems, and in Sofia’s outskirts these problems are very specific," Dragieva explained, adding that Grigorova is orientated her pre-election campaign, touching on social issues, such as municipal health care and social care, which are important in the outskirts. In Dragieva’s words what is new is that GERB loses ground in Sofia after 18 years in power in the capital.

Political scientist Daniel Stefanov told Nova TV that the results of the first round in Sofia confirm what happened in the April 2 parliamentary elections - there is a large new group of voters in Sofia who are progressive and modern, but on the other side there is also a large number of people who feel disenfranchised.

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Journalist Konstantin Valkov told bTV that CEC's decision to eliminate the voting machines was an absolutely demonstrative move. "Prime Minister Nikolay Denkov had to resign. What happened showed that there are three institutions in Bulgaria that are unreformed –SAC, CEC and SANS. They should be fighting vote-buying, corporate voting, not what happened. Denkov's resignation would have been an extremely strong move, but it was missed", Valkov argued. Commenting on the results of the first round in Sofia, the journalist said that this is the first time in which a far-left candidate - a populist from the broadest left sector, appears. "This niche was vacated by Kornelia Ninova and Maya Manolova and now there is a new political character", he noted, referring to Vanya Grigorova.

Expressing an opinion during the same debate in bTV’s morning talk show, journalist Mira Badzheva said that although no machine voting took place, there was a mobilization of people who wanted to vote by machine and the preliminary results in Varna and Sofia prove that. The mayoral candidates of [Boyko] Borissov in those two cities were quite unconvincing, she stressed. In her opinion, if Sofia Municipal Council Chairperson Georgi Georgiev of GERB had been nominated as GERB’s mayoral candidate in Sofia instead of Anton Hekimyan, he would have at least mobilized the party’s electorate and would have achieved better result than Hekimyan. According to Badzheva, it is not unlikely for Sofia to end up with a left-wing mayor, referring to Vanya Grigorova. Konstantin Valkov shared her opinion on that matter.

The third participant in bTV’s morning debate, Velislava Popova – editor-in-chief of Dnevnik.bg, emphasized that GERB loses not only the mayoral race in Sofia, but also loses positions in the Sofia Municipal Council.