site.btaCaretaker Government Will Spare No Effort to Ensure Free and Fair Elections

Caretaker Prime Minister Dimitar Glavchev Friday said the government would spare no effort to ensure free and fair elections on October 27.

Glavchev was answering a question in Parliament by BSP for Bulgaria Floor Leader Borislav Gutsanov, who said 1,200 persons had reportedly been registered at the same address in the southern village of Stamboliiski. Also, 10,000 persons have been registered at the same address in the southwestern village of Belo Pole, which has 600 residents. The address of a transformer station in that village appears as the registered address of 4,000 people, Gutsanov said. He asked if the Directorate General of Civil Registration and Administrative Services (GRAO) would run checks on suspicious registrations because in the context of a low voter turnout such cases could have a huge impact on the outcome of the October 27 parliamentary elections.

Glavchev said the caretaker government was planning to take the necessary steps to prevent vote rigging. The cited cases will be checked. "We will do whatever it takes to make the elections transparent, fair and free, and if there are doubts about practices that could compromise the fairness of the vote, we will act resolutely and with lightning speed," he said.

The Prime Minister called on the MPs to send alerts about suspicious registrations, adding that he had learned about those 1,200 persons in Stamboliiski from the news media. The government will act on each and every alert, he said.

The elections are primarily organized by the election commissions and the Central Election Commission, Glavchev recalled. The government provides material and technical support for the elections. Alerts about vote rigging and vote buying and selling fall under the ambit of the Penal Code and it is normal for the Interior Ministry to act on them jointly with the prosecution service, he said.