site.btaMECh Party Leader Says Velichie Party Ought to Ask for Election Results to Be Annulled

MECh leader Radostin Vasilev Thursday told reporters the most reasonable thing would be for the Velichie party to ask for the elections to be annulled - they did not make it into Parliament because they fell 30 or so votes short of the 4% electoral threshold. If there are irregularities and if they are proved, the elections should be annulled because they were not fair at all, he said.

Vasilev's comment was prompted by President Rumen Radev's statement earlier on Thursday that instead of calming the public down, the announcement of the election results had caused tension and raised questions about the fairness of the vote. 

MECh (Morality, Unity, Honour) won 12 seats in the October 27 snap parliamentary elections and is the smallest of eight groups in the 240-seat Parliament. Velichie got 3.999% of the vote.

Vasilev said the President was absolutely right, adding that there was "unprecedented vote buying by Delyan Peevski and his group". "We are facing an absolute institutional collapse in Bulgaria with an altogether illegitimate participation of MRF-New Beginning in this National Assembly. I understand the people who are protesting (...) as they did not make it into Parliament because of bought votes," he said.

Vasilev was referring to Peevski, one of two chairmen of the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF), who ran in the elections with the MRF-New Beginning. After MRF split in July, members loyal to the Movement's founder and honorary chairman Ahmed Dogan ran in the elections as the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms coalition.

Commenting on a proposal by Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB) for a cordon sanitaire around Peevski's MRF-New Beginning, Vasilev said that "people like Peevski should be arrested". MECh supports any measures against Peevski, he added.

Vasilev also commented on Thursday's statement by CC-DB's Nikolay Denkov, that "the most important question now is whether Borissov will go down the dictatorship path alongside Peevski or will distance himself from Peevski, and Bulgaria will keep its European and democratic course". The MECh leader said that CC-DB, the second largest group in Parliament, should place GERB and its leader Boyko Borissov within the sanitary cordon around Peevski. This will be fairer and what the Bulgarians want. "Otherwise it would seem that CC-DB are dancing around Borisov, asking him to back out of his partnership with Peevski, which Borissov cannot do because he is strongly dependent on him," Vasilev said.