Minister Nickolay Mladenov submitted recommendations to improve the electoral process
03 May 2012 News
At a meeting today, the Council of Ministers adopted a report by Foreign Minister Nickolay Mladenov in response to the final report by the Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). The report contains findings and recommendations regarding the presidential and local elections held in Bulgaria on October 23 and 30 2011. Minister Mladenov dealt with eight issues in the electoral process.
Minister Mladenov said that after the first serious step, the formation of the Central Election Commission as a permanent body, the next should follow – the establishment of a permanent electoral administration within the commission. This will require legislative changes, to enable the appointment of a permanent full-time staff, material and technical resources and an independent budget for the electoral administration.
This would enable the CEC to set up a uniform training programme for all members of electoral commissions, one of the OSCE-ODIHR recommendations.
Minister Mladenov also proposed legislative changes to the Electoral Code to require the CEC to publish minutes of committee meetings timeously to allow citizens to track all aspects of the activities of the CEC.
The main theme of Minister Mladenov’s report is the need to improve the transparency of the financing of elections and election campaigns, which was one of the recommendations of the OSCE-ODIHR.
The Foreign Minister proposed that the National Audit Office be authorised to check the declarations made by donors and individuals about the origin of funds donated to political campaigns. An additional measure proposed is to reduce the minimum amount of a donation subject to a compulsory declaration of the origin of the funds from 1000 leva to the level of the minimum wage.
According to the Foreign Minister, a discussion should be initiated on finding a solution to the problem with the process of the registration of voters, which has been a recommendation in several of the OSCE-ODIHR reports.
This is the first time that Bulgaria, after a thorough analysis, is providing the ODIHR with a consolidated response to the findings and recommendations in its report.
The response was prepared drawing on information from various state institutions – the CEC, Interior Ministry, the Ministry of Justice, Ministry of Regional Development and Public Works, the Prosecution and the Council for Electronic Media.
The Foreign Ministry summarised the comments received and will provide them to the justice committee of the National Assembly for consideration during discussions on the commission’s report. After the committee has completed its analysis, the Foreign Ministry will summarize the responses and provide this to the OSCE-ODIHR.