Kristian Vigenin in a letter to the interior ministry: You failed to guarantee the honesty of the elections in Yambol

Suspicion that a bought vote was tolerated in Yambol at the recent parliamentary elections was expressed in a letter to the Interior Minister Atanas Ilkov by the Deputy Chair of the BSP and MEP Kristian Vigenin.

He presents to the attention of the interior ministry a selected sample of the results of the MRF, New Beginning and of the ASP, and a comparison with the MRF’s results at previous elections. In an annex to the letter Vigenin has drawn up a table both for the overall result in the region, which has tripled compared with June, and for the results in individual polling stations in the region’s five municipalities, where drastic increases in favour of the MRF, New Beginning can be seen: from 5 to 89 votes in the village of Hadzhidimitrovo, from 1 to 55 votes in the village of Kukorevo, from 9 to 108 votes in the village of Zimnitsa, from 1 to 28 votes in the village of Stefan Karadzhovo, in polling station 46 in Yambol the result jumps from 12 to 113 votes, and in polling station 47 in Yambol from 3 to 78 votes.

Questions to the Interior Ministry

„Even the most cursory glance shows that the sharp increase, not merely by percentages but by tens of times, in the results of the two coalitions taken together and especially of the MRF, New Beginning, cannot be the result of standard political campaigning. Even more suspicious is the fact that these are polling stations covering an ethnic group vulnerable to specific financial and political motivation“, Kristian Vigenin points out in his letter.

He suggests that the buying of votes was not stopped by the interior ministry, although it was carried out systematically: „I would not want to speculate about the suspicions that it was not merely not stopped but was even tolerated. But whatever the reasons, it is evident from these results that the interior ministry did not cope with the task of guaranteeing the honesty of the elections and compliance with the law across the whole of Yambol region.“

Vigenin asks whether the interior ministry intends to take measures to identify the perpetrators and the specific political commissioners of this crime. „I believe it is right for the work of the Regional Directorate of the interior ministry to be checked, in order to clarify the reasons why these violations were allowed or not detected, while their results are nevertheless fixed in the election protocols“, the Deputy Chair of the BSP urges.