site.btaSteering Committee of Sofia Mayor Candidate Manolova Demand Election Nullification

November 4 (BTA) - Once all tally sheets from the second
round of local elections in Sofia have been processed, the
steering committee which nominated Maya Manolova as independent
candidate for mayor of Sofia will demand that the election
results be nullified. This transpires from the words of steering
 committee head Nikola Vaptsarov, as quoted by the steering
committee on Monday morning.

"I wanted the elections to be transparent and fair, the way our
election campaign was. Unfortunately, however, the GERB party in
 the person of municipal election commission head Polina
Vitanova decided to once again raise doubts about the election
process' fairness," Vaptsarov explained.
 
In his words, he tried to enter the Arena Armeetc Sofia Sports
Hall, where the vote tallying was taking place after Sunday's
run-off elections in the capital, but he was denied access by
Vitanova for reasons he considers ungrounded. "This, in
combination with the tens of alerts about vote buying and voter
manipulation, as well as the drastic difference between the exit
 polls and the parallel vote count, gives us reason to believe
that GERB are manipulating the election process," he added. 

Official Central Election Commission data show that GERB's
candidate for mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova, wins the
second round of local elections in the capital with 4.85 per
cent more votes than Manolova's. Based on 100 per cent of tally
sheets processed, Fandakova garnered 209,542 votes (49.88 per
cent of all votes), while Manolova was supported by 189,176
voters (45.13 per cent).

A total of 20,493 voters in Sofia (4.89 per cent) selected the
"None Of The Above" option on the ballot papers, the data also
show.

RY/DS