On Monday, the Chairwoman of the Constitutional Court (CC) Pavlina Panova gave an unprecedented statement on national television. In her address, she bluntly announced that the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the Information Services state-owned company were sabotaging the case of the ballot recounting in more than 2,000 polling stations related to last October's elections.
Instead, Information Services provided the prosecution with all the materials, documents, and flash drives in the case, including the records of the supplementary recount conducted by experts appointed by the CC without permission from the CEC or the CC. Earlier in the day, it became clear that the materials were requested by the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office in the framework of an investigation initiated on a signal from Information Services itself.
The debacle is causing tremor in Parliament, as most big parties, and especially GERB and Delyan Peevski's MRF-New Beginning - stand to lose parliamentary seats in case the recount is accepted by CEC.
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Current legislation does not allow the Constitutional Court to determine on its own which deputies ought to be dismissed when it finds violations in the electoral process. This only follows a decision of the CEC, Panova said. However, after 6pm today, the CEC informed the CC that it was unable to carry out the task because the Information Services had provided the prosecution with all the materials.
"The Constitutional Court is the only competent body to assess the legality of the elections for MPs and all bodies are obliged to fully cooperate with it and not to obstruct its activities. It is unacceptable to make the activity of the Constitutional Court dependent on actions or inactions of other state bodies," Panova said.
Calculated sabotage
All this is a clear indication of how the prosecutor's office and the state company Information Services are cooperating to prevent the recalculation of the election results after it emerged that the recount by the experts appointed by the CEC found numerous discrepancies with the official results.
Ironically, on Monday morning CEC chairwoman Kamelia Neykova had announced on bTV that she expected to receive from Information Services the final tally that day after the recount of ballots from more than 2,200 contested polling stations. She added that the CEC would immediately forward this data to the CC so the court could rule and this was expected to happen by the end of this week at the latest. But instead, later in the day, the CEC itself was surprised by a request from the prosecution to provide all the materials in this case.
New Beginning vs Greatness
The story has yet to develop, but a desire to delay the ruling of the CC over the election results is evident. It appears that the Information Services company has failed to submit the results of their recount to the CEC and indeed the state-owned company is purposefully delaying this to thwart a final decision.
The political stakes are high, hence all the ballyhoo in recent days when anecdotal evidence pointed to a reshuffle in parliament. In an interview with OFFNews on Friday, Tanya Timeva, from the Velichie (Greatness) Party, which is the main petitioner for the partial recount of the October 27 vote, said that the results show that her faction will enter parliament after the recount. But the record-holder in terms of votes falsely added to the original (October) tally was MRF-New Beginning.
But, regardless of anything else, one of the effects of this drama of recent days is to undermine the credibility of the CC's handling of the election case, given the expected outcome and clear indications that there was serious vote rigging in favor of MRF-New Beginning in the October election.
On Monday, the Chairwoman of the Constitutional Court (CC) Pavlina Panova gave an unprecedented statement on national television. In her address, she bluntly announced that the Central Election Commission (CEC) and the Information Services state-owned company were sabotaging the case of the ballot recounting in more than 2,000 polling stations related to last October's elections.
Instead, Information Services provided the prosecution with all the materials, documents, and flash drives in the case, including the records of the supplementary recount conducted by experts appointed by the CC without permission from the CEC or the CC. Earlier in the day, it became clear that the materials were requested by the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office in the framework of an investigation initiated on a signal from Information Services itself.
