site.btaUPDATED Vice President Iotova Says President Radev's Questions Mirror Citizens' Concerns

The questions that the President asked on Thursday are the questions that hundreds of thousands of Bulgarian citizens are asking themselves, and the ball is now in the court of the institutions that have to give these answers, and in the hands of the political forces that are already represented in Parliament - on how the National Assembly will start, what the positions and actions will be. The infringement on the elections means an infringement on national security and on the law, Vice President Iliana Iotova told journalists on the occasion of an official position of Head of State Rumen Radev, sent to the media, on the October 27 early parliamentary elections.

Considering that eight parties have entered Parliament and the ultimatums that they set for one another, Iotova said that she was growing more pessimistic every day about the chances for the formation of a regular government. 

Asked who the politician was who was buying votes during these elections, Iotova said that at this stage questions are addressed to the institutions and answers are awaited from them. "This time the threat is much more serious - the threat of whether Bulgaria will continue to be a democratic country or will go back in history to the 90s [of the last century]," she said.

Asked whether there were grounds for annulment of the election results, the Vice President said that this would be decided by the relevant authorities. "Let us see if the Constitutional Court will be alerted," she added.

In response to a question about when the first session of Parliament would be convened, Iotova said that this would be decided by the President, but since the final election results came out on Wednesday, all constitutional conditions would be met and, as always, the President would convene Parliament within the required time.

Iotova participated in the ceremony of unveiling a bust of Prof Shigeyoshi Matsumae, the founder of the Tokai University, at the Centre for Eastern Languages and Cultures at the Faculty of Classical and New Philologies of Sofia University.