Opposition and GERB claim massive election violation
Just two days before the local elections, GERB, MRF, TSP and Vazrazhdane have accused deputy minister of E-Government Mikhail Stoinov of stealing the codes of machine voting devices and are calling for his arrest.
The accusations follow a report by the State Agency for National Security (DANS), which describes how cameras in the Ministry of E-Government caught Stoinov recording on his phone and transferring to a flash memory the process of generating the code which had been completed two days before.
MP and IT expert Bozhidar Bozhanov called the accusations a "conspiracy" and described the evidence from DANS as a "video evidence of someone taking a picture of a laptop and impossible to be able to catch in a video code that is a few hundred lines long".
Sunday's vote thrown into question
MRF, TSP and Vazrazhdane want to cancel machine voting on Sunday. In the meantime, GERB is yet to declare an official position on the issue. But all four parliamentary groups have requested an urgent meeting with deputy Prime Minister Mariya Gabriel (GERB) and representatives of the Central Election Commission.
Delyan Peevski, the Magnitsky-sanctioned MP, Kostadin Kostadinov, leader of pro-Kremlin Vazrazhdane, and the "couch" leader of TSP, Slavi Trifonov, have now called for Sunday's elections to be canceled. Yet such a scenario is unlikely.
New nuclear reactor's construction schedule revealed
US company Westinghouse will certainly not build the new two units of the Kozloduy NPP, Valentin Nikolov, executive director of the nuclear power plant, said today. He added that the company does not generally take part in the building, it just provides the technology and "there are several companies that can do that".
His comment followed yesterday's government decision to provide 500 million levs for the start of the construction of a new seventh unit of the Kozloduy NPP, and preparation for construction of an eighth. Nikolov said the builder of the blocks will probably be chosen through a tender, and it could be any company from South Korea to the USA. He does not expect to have a problem with securing the financing, apart from the state participation, which is expected to be around 1.5 billion euros.
Nikolov pointed out that the most optimistic deadline for commissioning the first new unit of the Kozloduy NPP is 2030. He specified that in the first years the new units will work with Westinghouse fuel because this is the condition for their warranty to be valid. The supplier could then be selected by tender.
