What conclusions can we draw after the Constitutional Court issued a decision that rearranged the parties in parliament. How do we hold elections… Lawyer Petar Slavov speaks to FACTI.
- Lawyer Slavov, what are the lessons from the legal case that was spun by the Constitutional Court and the entry of the party “Majesty“ into parliament. For the first time, the President of the Constitutional Court Pavlina Panova asked to use her right to make a television address on BNT to announce that institutions that should support the Constitutional Court are hindering its work…
- Indeed, for the first time, the President of the Constitutional Court has used this right under Art. 52 of the Radio and Television Act, and this in itself is a sufficient indication that the reasons were very serious. Only the President, the President of the National Assembly, the Prime Minister, the Prosecutor General, and the Presidents of the Supreme Court of Cassation and the Supreme Administrative Court have such a right to address the nation on Bulgarian National Television, and it is indeed used in exceptional cases. In this case, the reason was an attempt to delay, and perhaps even thwart, the Constitutional Court's ruling on case no. 33/2024 on the election challenge. In practice, we all saw with our own eyes how for days, if not weeks, the CEC and the company "Information Services" were passing the ball around and not carrying out the ordered recount of the election results, in accordance with what was established by the recount by the Constitutional Court in over 2,200 polling stations and the eliminated violations in counting the votes there. Logically, the question remains open - what would have happened if the Constitutional Court had ordered an opening and recount in all nearly 13,000 polling stations, as requested in one of the complaints?
- Why did the "Specialized" department of the Sofia City Prosecutor's Office request documents from the unfinished constitutional case No. 33. How do you view this?
- There is a lot of irony in the request of this "Specialized" department, that and the 6th, and the analogies that some colleagues made with the way of operating the 6th department under the 6th management of the communist “State Security“, and the already closed “special prosecutor's offices” are not accidental. The demands of the prosecutor in question from the 6th department of the SGP were not just absurd, they demonstrated a clear ignorance of both the Constitution and the Law on the Constitutional Court (which explicitly states that the Constitutional Court is an independent state body, outside the judicial system, which functions according to the procedure specified in the Fundamental Law and the Constitutional Court Act), as well as our electoral legislation. Because the requested "complaints from political parties" simply did not exist - the separate requests for partial or complete annulment of the elections were made by 48 and more members of parliament from different parliamentary groups. And what can we say about the requirement to provide "the reasons with which the Constitutional Court opened case No. 33"? And wasn't this an attempt to directly interfere in the work of the constitutional judges and the formation of their internal convictions, in accordance with the law?! Truly a very shameful prosecutorial act that requires an internal check at least of the competence of the prosecutor who issued it!
- This was another war between the institutions, or a legal push… The other participants were the CEC, the prosecutor's office and “Information Service“ – all factors that are related to the election process. How can people believe that the elections are fair anymore…
- In fact, it was the decision of the Constitutional Court and the categorical and independent behavior of both the chairman and the other constitutional judges, who unanimously adopted the decision in case No. 33 and did not succumb to pressure, that demonstrated to the citizens that in Bulgaria there are still institutions that are not "captured" and do their job conscientiously! The decision itself contains an extremely in-depth analysis of specific problems in our electoral legislation, including guidelines on how they can be overcome by the legislator - including the replacement of entire sectional commissions on election day; the falsified ballots in a number of sections, filled in with the same handwriting; the numerous discrepancies between the actual vote of citizens and what was reported in the election protocols, etc. It is high time that the legislator really seriously tackled the restoration of the Electoral Code from the madness that the "paper coalition" created in the 48th National Assembly, the conversion of machine voting terminals into printers and the unacceptable rendering meaningless to such a large extent the machine vote.
- We have a Constitutional Court decision that rearranged the parties in parliament, and this was somewhat expected. But was it expected that ballots in bags would be missing… Where is the people's vote…
- In fact, the missing ballots have a very simple explanation, and that is that in quite a few sections, due to the discrepancies in the control checks in the protocols, when handing over the papers to the REC, the members of quite a few SICs were forced to empty the bags on the spot and count again. You can imagine what the reactions were of people, already very tired in the wee hours of the night to have to repeat the counting process and how very likely it was that during the subsequent repacking of the bags, in some sections the ballots were either forgotten, or were left somewhere on the floor of halls like "Arena Armeec" and that is why they were not found during the recount at the Constitutional Court. With the machine vote in its original form with printing a control receipt and machine counting, in 2021 there were simply no such problems and the people from the section commissions in 21 were already at home, not in the queues in front of the RECs!
- Why is the prosecutor's office waiting 4 months after the elections, despite the numerous manipulations established by video surveillance, to conduct a large-scale inspection of election violations? If it weren't for this case No. 33, would the topic have been raised at all…
- A great question that also suggests the answer to the extent to which the actions of the prosecutor from the 6th department of the SGP were "spontaneous" or accidental. It is obvious that after months of not reacting in any way to the violations seen on election night with video surveillance, it is unacceptable that literally hours before the Constitutional Court's decision was issued after a thorough recount, you suddenly remember to demand the evidence collected by the constitutional judges themselves. And this in a pending case, instead of the prosecutor's office having collected its own in the meantime under the Code of Criminal Procedure. It is obvious that a completely different goal was pursued with these actions and it is not at all difficult to guess what it was!
- Was the Constitutional Court put under pressure, even though its decision was unanimous?
- After everything we have seen in recent weeks, and from what has been said so far, this clearly indicates to me that an attempt was made to put the Constitutional Court under pressure, but as you note - the unanimity in adopting the decision to challenge the elections shows that this attempt was not successful. Moreover - the decision is detailed, well-reasoned, clearly motivated and is already widely cited within the working group of the Legal Commission on the amendments to the Electoral Code. I am convinced that if the conclusions of the Constitutional Court are taken into account in the changes to our electoral legislation, we will have a far better and fairer electoral law.
- To form counting centers in order to eliminate the work in the Sectional Election Commissions. Does this seem reasonable to you...
- The debate on the formation of the counting centers is yet to come within the working group on the EC, but one thing is clear - guarantees are needed that the citizens' vote will not be manipulated and falsified in the way we saw this from the expert opinions within case No. 33. There are different ways to achieve this - starting with the easiest, namely - restoring machine voting and machine counting with the issuance of control receipts, according to the 2021 model. Go through the professionalization of the election administration, quality selection and serious training of the members of the section commissions and you get to the counting centers, which, if machine voting is restored, would be relieved because they will only deal with counting the entirely paper vote. And recent years show that its share is progressively decreasing and nearly 60% of citizens prefer to vote by machine, regardless of the clear campaign that parties from the so-called "paper coalition" have been waging for months against this method of voting.