site.btaMedia Review: March 13

HEADLINES

The saga around the recalculation of the October 2024 parliamentary election results is a leading topic in Bulgarian media on Thursday. Most print and online media cover the story. The morning programmes of the Bulgarian National Television (BNT), bTV and Nova TV hosted discussion studios on the topic. The Bulgarian National Radio (BNR) had political scientist Parvan Simeonov comment on the issue.

The top headline on the front page of 24 Chasa is an interview with Sofia’s downtown Sredets District Mayor Traycho Traykov, who says that a red zone for car parking is needed in the city centre. Trud leads with a headline about the recalculation of the election results reading “Flashlight, matches, scissors instead of ballots in the ballot bag”. Telegraph’s top frontpage headline is about the murder of an 18-year-old boy in Bulgaria and the arrest of the murderers in Czechia. The leading headline on the frontpage of Duma is about a report on the progress of measures taken for the reducing the administrative burden.

RECALCULATION OF OCTOBER 2024 GENERAL ELECTIONS

24 Chasa writes that the Velichie party “might be out [below the 4% barrier to enter Parliament] again, a rotation may be only among the current MPs”. Velichie may not get into parliament, but there will certainly be a rotation of seats in the 51st National Assembly - both between different groups and within parties. This projection was made from the parliamentary rostrum by one of the authors of the methodology for the distribution of parliamentary seats and former CEC member Prof. Krasimir Kalinov. He is among the eight out of 18 experts who recounted the results of the October 27 vote in the case for a partial challenge of the election results in the Constitutional Court. They came to Parliament to explain why the results of several polling stations were nullified, even though the Central Election Commission (CEC) records and video footage show that voting took place there. Their hearing was a continuation of Tuesday's session, when the MPs summoned the CEC members and the head of Information Services Ivaylo Filipov. Trud’s frontpage story with the headline “Flashlight, matches, scissors instead of ballots in the ballot bag” reads that a torch, a match, a lighter, scissors, empty rolls and unused ballot papers, this is what the experts of the Constitutional Court found in the ballot bags instead of voters' votes. A headline in Telegraph also has the same highlight.

Political scientist Parvan Simeonov told BNR that “we have hit rock bottom”. "Whatever the Constitutional Court rules in this situation, I don't believe anyone will be convinced. Whether Velichie enters Parliament or not, we will not convince the general public that this is the right decision and that this is not a political decision. It is because of the overall picture. It will be the aggregate result or rather the lack of result," he said. According to him, if Velichie's party enters parliament, the government will probably continue to work, but its majority will be much more fragile. "In this fragile majority, the government will increasingly depend on external factors, such as the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) - New Beginning and, on some issues, Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria (CC-DB)," the political analyst added. According to him, the only thing that can make sense of the government's existence will be possibly waiting for the convergence report and Bulgaria's entry into the eurozone. “We need an optimization of the Election Code obviously. Sectional commissions should stop counting votes. The amount of paper should be minimized,” Simeonov noted.

The former chairman of the CEC, the lawyer Alexander Andreev told BNT that what was achieved with this case of the Constitutional Court has allowed to reveal those violations and shortcomings in the work of the election administration in the conduct of the elections and those flaws in the Bulgarian electoral system, which should henceforth be reviewed and corrected in the next change of the electoral legislation. The morning programme of BNT also hosted a discussion with sociologists Evelina Slavkova, Elena Darieva and PR expert Diana Damyanova.

Ivilina Aleksieva-Robinson, who is an expert witness in the case of the annulment of the elections and a former chairperson of the CEC, told bTV that it was a big surprise for her that the National Assembly called to hear experts in a pending, not concluded proceeding before the Constitutional Court. “I went to that hearing, but with some minor exceptions, the questions the MPs asked were not related to the expertise,” she said. "When ballot papers are missing, the addressee of the inspection is the municipal administration and the officials who opened the premises. The addressee of this inspection should hardly be the constitutional judges and the experts of the Constitutional Court. More broadly, I find this extremely worrying," Aleksieva-Robinson noted.

Constitutional law expert prof Plamen Kirov told Nova TV that there can be no full annulment of the elections, since the Constitutional Court only inspects 2204 polling stations. "Depending on the results that are given by the recalculation of the election result by the CEC, I assume that within today the Constitutional Court will announce its decision. It will say what it considers to be unlawful and order the CEC to declare other MPs elected if it comes to that," Kirov said.

ECONOMY

Kuzman Iliev, financial analyst and chairman of the Bulgaria Can party, told BNR that the country’s state budget has missed costs. “The deficit is not 3%, it is at least 6% and this is clearly visible in the debt parameters. Debt is being accumulated through the back door, which is being hidden from both our partners and citizens. (...) Another deficit is being made through debt," he said. According to him, there is a consensus for a relatively quick adoption of the budget because the public pressure is very high.

* * *

Ivaylo Galabov, Chairman of the Board of the Union of Poultry Breeders in Bulgaria, told the morning programme of BNT that biggest problems in agriculture and the poultry sector are the shortage of workers, the difficult working conditions and the high demands that are constantly being imposed by European regulations, which make production extremely difficult and, on the other hand, make us uncompetitive with third-country producers. He pointed out that there are imports from Ukraine, which is removed from the international grain market, which gives only one direction to Ukrainian producers, namely - to try to export animal production and flood Europe with it. "As long as Ukrainian grain is not freely allowed to be traded on the world markets, Ukraine's animal production will be cheap and flood the European Union with cheap products." Galabov said the international price is currently very good as a result of avian influenza in America and a large egg deficit. "But because Bulgarian producers are honest and loyal to Bulgarian consumers, they leave the necessary quantities for Bulgaria and that is why the price in Bulgaria is the lowest in the European Union."