„Fair elections are the most effective guarantors of democracy, and as a society and institutions, we must work to increase confidence in this instrument of the rule of law.“
This was stated by President Rumen Radev, who met today with representatives of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). They are part of an international mission to observe the elections for MPs in Bulgaria on April 4.
The Head of State noted that Bulgaria faces the challenge of holding elections for the first time in an epidemic situation and recalled that it was in this regard that it held a series of consultations with the institutions responsible for the election process, health authorities, parliamentary and extra-parliamentary political formations, civil society organizations and representatives of the Bulgarian communities abroad. The purpose of the meetings is to take measures to ensure the health and voting rights of citizens, as well as honesty, transparency and accessibility of the electoral process to encourage citizen participation. The legitimacy of each election consists in the mass vote of the citizens, and the public’s trust in the next parliament and government is the biggest capital for them, Rumen Radev stressed.
During the meeting, a number of issues related to the organization and conduct of parliamentary elections were discussed. Among the highlights of the conversation were the conditions created for the quarantined citizens to be able to exercise their constitutional right to vote; the organization of sufficient mobile polling stations; the resulting difficulties in processing the results of the simultaneous voting with machines and paper ballots; the non-admission of a high percentage of invalid ballots, reported in previous elections in our country; the debate on the introduction of video surveillance in the counting of ballots and the drawing up of election protocols, as well as the potential for the introduction of remote voting for Bulgarian citizens abroad.
Head of the Observation Mission Corinne Yonker stressed that this is the ninth OSCE election observation mission in Bulgaria, which will be guided in its work not by comparisons with previous elections in our country or elections in other countries, but by the standards and criteria of the international organization in this field, announced by the Presidency.
