BULGARIAN DEMOCRACY: IN A VERY DELICATE STATE

 

In April and May I wrote several articles for the London Progressive Journal on the political situation in Bulgaria. These were before and just after that country’s general election. The first articles were largely based on reports by Transparency International: the latter about my experiences as an observer at the elections. This article comes after I have re-visited Bulgaria to find its democracy in a very delicate state indeed.

Just before I left I wrote an article for the Gibraltar newspaper ‘Panorama’ in which I stated how much I was looking forward to this visit. The last had been tense to say the least: now with the BSP, Bulgaria’s socialists, the largest party in the new government I was looking forward to attending the Party of European Socialists Council which was held last weekend. I had also allowed time to see more of the country and to visit friends made during the elections.

However my image of a Bulgaria now at peace with itself was far from accurate. There seemed to more police around than usual when we arrived on the Tuesday night. On the Thursday our friends in Kyustendil where we were staying told us of protests in Sofia and in local towns. By the time we came back to Sofia for the PES Council on Friday we had been summoned to a security meeting and the event was held amidst tight security.

To wind back in time the populist GERB government had been brought down in February by angry, violent street demonstrations. The centre right party was accused of abuses of democracy, links to organised crime, election rigging, creating an economic crisis whilst allowing electricity prices to rise, which a country with 50 per cent of its population in extreme poverty, could ill afford.

After the May 12 election GERB was still the largest party but its number of MPs had collapsed and no other elected party would pact with it. Hence the second placed BSP, which was the only party to increase its vote and number of MPs, formed a coalition with the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, a member of Liberal International. Together they have 120 of the 240 seats in Parliament and hence rely on the support of the nationalist party ATAKA to rule. However ATAKA is anti Turkish and anti Roma whilst the MRF speaks for both. It was a pact to restore a functioning democracy amongst parties who largely had nothing in common. Whether it is a marriage made in heaven or hell remains to be seen currently it is in purgatory.

On May 29 former finance minister Plamen Oresharski, an up to now respected figure, was appointed Prime Minister. He had the support of the BSP and the other two parties. GERB has largely boycotted parliament since they were ousted from power making a mockery of the elected chamber. ATAKA, who previously supported GERB in government, have also been absent on occasions.

At a time when Bulgaria needed peace and stability Oresharski made a number of major political blunders. There are now street protests in Sofia and wider Bulgaria over the inclusion of the MRF in the new coalition and the decision of Oresharski to appoint MRF MP Delyan Peevski, a controversial media mogul who is linked to a corruption scandal, as head of the State intelligence agency, DANS. This latter decision was quickly revoked and acknowledged as a mistake but the damage was done.

A regional governor from the MRF, Ventsislav Kaymakanov, has been appointed in Plovdiv, Bulgaria’s second city, which has caused more street protests. Dozens of people have also gathered in front of the building of the district administration in the city of Blagoevgrad to protest against the appointment of Musa Palev as district governor. These Turkish appointments have been made in areas where virtually no Turks live.

The MRF is a party whose main goals are the interests of the Muslims and its principal electorate are the minority groups Turks, Roma, Muslim Bulgarians and Bulgarian Turks in Turkey. The MRF is widely distrusted, has been accused of major election abuses alongside those of GERB and its ethnic and religious orientation breaks article 11 of the Constitution of Bulgaria.

Many of those Bulgarians who wanted a new dawn after the May 12 elections are in despair that the MRF are in government and suspect them of pulling many strings in their interests to keep the coalition in power.

If you read one English on-line Bulgarian newspaper, which obviously supports GERB, you would be led to believe that Sofia and wider Bulgaria is witnessing street riots of the same intensity as those that drove GERB from power. There are no such protests. However GERB wants people to believe the country is in ferment and they are being called back to save the nation.

In contrast if you scan the BBC or other reputable websites for news you will find little or nothing of the unrest – but protests there are.

I watched a lengthy one pass last Friday evening which went on for some 40 minutes through the main streets of Sofia. It was noisy but so peaceful that police only escorted it to show the way. These were not GERB supporters but largely young people who want a new start for their country.

These people feel let down by the new government that includes the MRF and which has made serious errors from day one. It is hard for them to accept that the BSP, to be pragmatic and to bring stability to Bulgaria, have to pact with this party as well as ATAKA that are an anathema to the majority of ordinary people. The BSP itself is in turmoil especially over the original appointment of Delyan Peevski with resignations and a vote of confidence which BSP Leader and PES President Sergei Stanishev won. It has to be said many PES leaders from around Europe, whilst fully supportive of the BSP and Stanishev, share many of the protestors’ legitimate concerns. Rarely in recent years have socialist principals been so keen tested.

The unpalatable alternative is fresh elections with the likelihood that GERB would again seize power with the inevitable decline of Bulgaria into an authoritarian, corrupt State. It is an unholy mess and that is why I say democracy in Bulgaria is in a very delicate state indeed.

By the by Transparency International in Bulgaria is producing a report on the May elections with recommendations for improving the electoral process for the future. Once that document is produced I will bring you its findings – in English.

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on June 28 2013)

BULGARIA ELECTIONS: WIDESPREAD ABUSE BUT HOPE

I set off to Bulgaria after being selected by the Party of European Socialists to be part of the 100 plus team from all across the EU to monitor the General Election on Sunday. The president of PES, Sergei Stanishev, who is a former prime minister of Bulgaria and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, had appealed for observers because of the very real fears of vote manipulation and vote buying by the GERB party that resigned from government after violent mass street protests against austerity measures, rising electricity prices and corruption in February.

The OSCE (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) also sent around 200 observers. Other groups such as Transparency International had sent up an election abuse monitoring unit and had observers at polling stations. The presence of these observers made major news headlines in Bulgaria. We were all officially registered with the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry and had stamped passes that granted us major powers within the polling stations.

I finally arrived in Sofia late Friday afternoon and meet up with other arrivals from France, Brussels, Greece and Holland for the coach trip to our hotel. We were greeted by Nikola Mitov who is the BSP’s director of international affairs.

On Saturday the work began. There was a briefing session for English speaking observers with a detailed talk on the voting law, polling station procedures with numerous forms to be filled in. If anybody enters the polling station with a gun we have to note it on the form!

Around 13.00 I headed off to Kyunstendil, about 90 kms from Sofia with a snow covered mountain backdrop. My driver – interpreter Georgi stopped at the BSP party headquarters at Dupritsa which was in the same 100km wide constituency. We had lunch with the number two candidate, Ivan Ibrishimov who on Sunday was elected as the BSP’s second MP, the local party chairman Stanislav Pavlov, who is also number four on the list plus some activists.

As we had lunch news came in that 350,000 fake ballot papers had been discovered by police after a raid on a printing works owned by a GERB councillor. The councillor told the media it was not anything to worry about! On to Kyunstendil where we met the district chairman and former mayor Valentine Volvo and were briefed on polling day strategy.

The Roma gypsies are the most likely to sell their votes for cash or beer and food. One scam is a gypsy gang leader sits in a car near the polling station. He already has a ballot paper stamped with the first of the two stamps a legal vote requires. A Roma comes by takes the ballot paper from him which is already marked. He then presents his identity card, receives another stamped ballot paper which when in the polling booth he puts in his pocket and deposits the voting paper he was given into the box after it has received the second stamp. He then takes his ballot paper out to the gang leader, who takes it from him, fills it in and gives it to the next bought voter. Georgi says this is called the Indian Scam but nobody could tell me why. It is possible these illegal blank votes were for the vote buying operation.

So to polling day and back to Dupritsa. The day didn’t get off well with the local election commission advising it had changed the supervising teams and hence many wouldn’t have documentation. Sent an urgent email to Transparency International who started an investigation. News came in that two polling station in a complex of nine had refused to give the second stamp on the ballot papers which made them invalid. We went to investigate but of course once we arrived and showed our official papers the voting procedures were fully adhered to.

However there were three Roma polling stations at the same school complex and there the atmosphere was very different. There were groups of Roma supporting the former ruling party GERB openly intimidating those coming to vote in the corridor. They bragged to Georgi they could vote when and how they wanted acting in an aggressive manner when we monitored what was going on. There was no obvious sign of vote buying and nothing you could point out to officials so we went back several times to make the point we were hadn’t been scared off and we were watching.

Then a curious case. A report that 60 ballots had been accepted but not recorded at a school polling station. By the time we arrived so too had officials from the commission. The number was in fact 47 and the chairwoman said she had put a youth in charge of the polling who apparently did not realize you had to cross off voters names and get them to sign. The chairwoman argued it was an unfortunate mistake. The ballots couldn’t be taken out of the box as nobody knew which they were so when the final tally was completed after the polls closed there would be 47 votes too many. I shall return to this is a moment

Whilst we were there a man on crutches complained to us that none of the three polling stations at this complex would give him a ballot paper. He was told to enter the polling room with us at which point he was promptly given a ballot paper; they didn’t even make a show of searching for his name: then all the procedures were correctly followed. Later the Election Commission ruled the chairwoman had deliberately added the 47 votes for GERB and she was sanctioned.

There were no signs of vote buying at the Roma centres but by mid-afternoon the news reports told of three men having been arrested for committing the crime that day. Also by late afternoon when Roma usually crowded their polling stations they were empty with reports they simply had not turned out. TV stated that Turkish Bulgarians who normally flood across the border from Turkey to support Ataka (the Islam Party whose name translates as Attack and according to electoral law should be illegal) had seemingly not travelled either. Something was clearly in play here. Feedback from the local Roma said they’d be threatened by GERB so they stayed at home.

In the Kyunstendil constituency there were around 100 cases of voting abuse by GERB.  In one polling station the GERB observer smashed the photocopying machine preventing the copying of the end of poll protocol showing the result. He only delayed but couldn’t prevent the inevitable. As voters swung to the BSP and they took two of the four seats, up one, these abuses will not be contested. We didn’t meet sitting BSP MP Maya Manolova as after the polls closed rioting broke out in Sofia and she was ordered to the capital.

Obviously my experiences were just a snap shot of the election process across Bulgaria. Was the polling process carried out in a manner that we would find acceptable: no it wasn´t. However it was clear the chairpersons of the polling station committees were very concerned at our presence: one even protesting that everything she did was in order. Indeed when we were present everything was in order but it is clear in some cases there had been irregularities before we arrived and they may have started again as soon as we left. It is important though to state that probably because of the international observers these elections were far more free and fair than in the past. There is hope now that as GERB is unlikely to continue in government further advances can be made in establishing free and fair elections. At the next election it is vital the observers are allowed to return and in even greater numbers because it is quite clear the fact the world was watching did have a beneficial impact on this troubled democracy.

Photo: l to r: Georgi, Dr Ivan Ibrishimov (now BSP MP), David Eade, Stanislav Pavlov and activist.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on May 14 2013 with a version in the New People on May 17 2013)

URGENT CALLS FOR TRANSPARENCY IN BULGARIA’S GENERAL ELECTION

On Sunday May 12 Bulgaria will hold its general election. The outcome will not only be closely awaited by the people of that country but by fellow EU States and organisations such as Transparency International, which has been monitoring corruption in Bulgaria for over a decade.

The President of the Party of European Socialists, Sergei Stanishev, is also the leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party and a former Bulgarian Prime Minister. After the election was called he stated: “During the last presidential and local elections in 2011 the ruling right wing party GERB committed a huge number of violations and fraud. Now they have introduced changes in the Electoral code in a way that hinders the transparency of the election process and creates prerequisites for distortion and frankly substitution of results, while refusing to incorporate a number of OSCE (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) recommendations.” He added that other socialist party leaders he spoke to were incredulous when he said vote rigging was possible in an EU member State.

This wasn’t the case of a socialist leader calling “foul” before the event. Transparency International has a special team dedicated to monitoring the General Election. TI says: “The most significant challenges that we have identified to persist in the electoral process in Bulgaria are vote-buying and controlled vote, which are clearly a product of the socio-economic conditions in country being taken advantage by both political and criminal actors.” Indeed in the 2011 presidential and local elections 12 per cent of Bulgarians told Transparency International they would sell their votes with nearly 60 per cent of those saying they would do so because of their poverty.

Yet the problems for Bulgaria go much deeper than that. It is not just the GERB ruling party bringing in corrupt practices although there is clear evidence of that. For instance there have been allegations of illegal phone tapping which are linked to Tzvetan Tzvetanov, the former Minister of the Interior who is now the Director of Elections for the GERB party. However Bulgaria has been behind the game all along in making the transition from Communist single party to democratic state.

One of the many Transparency International reports on Bulgaria states: “The problem of corruption became a central political and social concern in Bulgaria towards the end of the 1990s, and since then has topped the governmental agenda. Despite the prioritization of the issue, Bulgaria has systematically demonstrated very high levels of perception of corruption: according to the TI Corruption Perception Index (2011) it is the lowest scoring country in the EU. If there is a trend in this regard, it is rather negative.”

Now Bulgaria became a member of the EU in 2007 when the concerns of the corruption and lack of transparency in political and institutional bodies was well known. I have no problem with Bulgaria becoming a member of the EU: I would however argue that this should have happened after the country had clearly demonstrated that its political parties and institutions were fully transparent. Until that status had been achieved, and we are still far from that situation, then Bulgaria should have been helped along the path to membership by the EU and then admitted. 

On April, 4 an Integrity Pact for Free, Fair and Democratic Election in Bulgaria was signed. The document is elaborated by 8 non-governmental organizations, including Transparency International, all of which will conduct independent civil monitoring of the forthcoming general election.

Transparency International states: “The main objective of the Pact is to commit the political parties to the conduct of election campaigns in accordance to the standards for transparency and accountability, and to the implementation of measures preventing violations of the citizens’ voting rights.”

This is a positive step but the question still remains: why should such steps be even necessary in an EU Member State?

Under the pact the Bulgarian political parties are committing themselves to:

To nominate for members of the Precinct Electoral Commissions candidates with experience in the organization of the electoral process, professional preparation, high personal moral and reputation;

To increase the competence of its representatives to the electoral commissions by conducting additional training with regard to the rules of the electoral process;

To carry out information campaigns against vote-buying, controlled vote and the negative effects on the voters’ rights, and the democratic process in the country;

To ensure public access to information about the number of proxy representatives, by making it available on their websites;

To ensure greater transparency of their elections campaign financing by providing timely information to the National Audit Office, with regard to received donations throughout the campaign;

To assist the independent observers - representatives of the Civil Coalition for Monitoring of the Electoral Process in their efforts to monitor the campaign financing and Election Day developments.

  But it is not just the political parties that are involved but the non-governmental organizations too. They have committed themselves to:

To conduct independent civil monitoring of the electoral process in accordance to the internationally established standards;

To observe the principles of political impartiality, transparency and integrity in the monitoring process;

To carry out information campaign among the Bulgarian citizens with regard to their participation of the electoral process, institutional responsibilities, and negative effects of vote-buying and controlled-vote;

To inform the Bulgarian public and European institutions about the results of the conducted monitoring

To formulate proposal for amendments in the legislation and the practice of the Bulgarian institutions, aiming to enhance transparency and integrity in the Elections to the European Parliament, as well as to offer its expertise to the responsible institutions.

   
It is quite clear from the Integrity Pact for Free, Fair and Democratic Election that democracy has been seriously abused in Bulgaria and political corruption is rife. However I would firmly argue the blame for this appalling situation rests not only with the government in Sofia, which it surely does, but equally with the EU in Brussels too because it has failed to insist on free and fair elections in Member States.

 

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on May 1 2013)

VOTING VIOLATIONS IN AN EU MEMBER STATE

 

Voting violations such as ballot rigging, vote buying and control are acts we associate with the shadier, non democratic nations of the world. However such practices are alive and well right here in the EU.

Let us start in Budapest in Hungary. In March it was the venue for the Party of European Socialists (PES) Activists meeting specifically to give support to the Hungarian Socialist Party, MSzP. There has been concern in the EU at the actions of the ruling populist Fidesz party, which has been clamping down on the freedom of the media and has amended the Constitution to make unconstitutional laws constitutional. These measures and the rise of far right neo-Nazi groups such as Jobbik have caused widespread alarm.

Present in Budapest was the PES President and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), Sergei Stanishev, who is a former Bulgarian Prime Minister. Stanishev stunned PES activists by calling for international observers to help oversee the polling in Bulgaria’s general election on May 12. He stated: “During the last presidential and local elections in 2011 the ruling right wing party GERB committed a huge number of violations and fraud. Now they have introduced changes in the Electoral code in a way that hinders the transparency of the election process and creates prerequisites for distortion and frankly substitution of results, while refusing to incorporate a number of OSCE (Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights) recommendations.” He added that other socialist party leaders he spoke to were incredulous when he said vote rigging was possible in an EU member State.

Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Boiko Borisov and his GERB government resigned following nationwide street protests against high electricity prices and austerity measures in February. Clashes between protesters and police left numerous people injured. The President Rosen Plevneliev appointed with some difficulty an interim prime minister to take the country through to early elections on May 12.

As elsewhere around the world the protests were taking place largely independently of traditional political parties and trade unions. The protestors, mainly young people, were using the social media including Facebook to organize. The street protests across Bulgaria, which is the EU’s poorest country, were initially over high electricity prices but then took an anti-government turn resulting in Borisov- a former bodyguard to Bulgaria’s Soviet-era dictator Todor Zhivkov - abandoning power, for now.

Before the unrest GERB were trailing in polls to the opposition BSP: currently the former ruling party has a six point lead. Although Stanishev leads his BSP in to the elections he says he will not be prime minister again rather former finance minister, Plamen Oresharski, would take on the role.

The key question is: is there any validity in BSP leader Sergei Stanishev’s fears of vote rigging? The answer sadly is “Yes!” Transparency International has an office in Sofia and a special team dedicated to monitoring the General Election. A spokesperson told me: “Fortunately, the protest related tension has settled down in the past month and we hope to have a peaceful election day on May 12. The most significant challenges that we have identified to persist in the electoral process in Bulgaria are vote-buying and controlled vote, which are clearly a product of the socio-economic conditions in country being taken advantage by both political and criminal actors.”

However this isn’t a new phenomenon in Bulgaria, indeed Sergei Stanishev openly admits his administration ignored the problem when he was in power. Transparency International has been monitoring corruption in Bulgaria for many years and its on-going reports are too detailed to relate here but can be found on their website.

The Transparency International spokesperson added: “Another type of persisting deficiency that we have identified from previous observations is the so called “organizational violations” related to the inadequate capacity and actions of the institutions responsible to organize and prepare the elections. We will systematically monitor these institutions via an instrument called Roadmap to the 2013 Elections and provide timely recommendations to the institutions on the basis of identified issues by Transparency International – Bulgaria and the options to be corrected.”

There will be international PES observers in Bulgaria for the elections and indeed Transparency International and other organisations will also be monitoring the polling with their own teams. The burning questions are how is it an EU Member State can not guarantee free and fair elections and if it can’t, as is clearly the situation in Bulgaria, why was it admitted to the EU in the first place?

Surely one of the prerequisites to being a member of the EU is an adherence to the norms of democracy. Either a country complies or it shouldn’t be in the EU.

Hungary is very much under notice from other EU member States who are alarmed at developments there under Fidesz. The general election is due there next year: will it be fair and free?

It is not only democracy that will be on trial in Bulgaria on May 12 but the credibility of the EU itself. If one Member State is undemocratic then it shatters the democratic credibility of the others. And the EU’s credibility as a democratic institution is very much on the line.

This is especially so as a new scandal has now hit Bulgaria. There have been allegations of illegal phone tapping which are linked to Tzvetan Tzvetanov, the former Minister of the Interior. And what is Tzvetan Tzvetanov’s current role? He is Director of Elections for the GERB party. The latest dramatic development is the former GERB Minister of Agriculture, Miroslav Naydenov, has announced that he too had been subject to illegal phone tapping. Stanishev says previously GERB Prime Minister, Boiko Borisov, had boasted in the media that he has 100 eyes and 100 ears. The BSL leader adds this latest “revelation puts that comment in the harshest light”.

In the European Parliament, the Committee on Civil Liberties, Justice and Home Affairs, will discuss whether they should formally debate the issue. The inclination at the EU is to dismiss such scandals as a matter for “internal political debate”. EU leaders bury their heads in the sand as democracy flounders around them. Bulgaria today. Hungary tomorrow? Then where next?

(You can visit Transparency Internationals website for their campaign for monitoring of the elections at: www.samizbiram.bg)

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on April 27 2013)

 

THE BATTLE TO SAVE DEMOCRACY

In a recent article in the London Progressive Journal I highlighted an opinion poll in Andalucía that showed a majority of people in that region believed Spain to be the most corrupt nation in the EU.

Do I believe that Spain holds that title? No I don’t. There have been serious cases of political corruption but there are other more sinister abuses elsewhere. Having said that as the people of Spain live in a country in political and economic meltdown it is all too easy to see how they reached that grim conclusion. I know: I live amongst them.

Far more worrying to me is the collapse in trust by the people of Andalucía in their monarch, government in Madrid and Sevilla, the main political parties, the institutions, justice and the financial sector. Only the army and state security service were held in high regard. Students of Spanish politics will know that Spain has been here before.

Last week I spent several days in Budapest at a conference organised by the Party of European Socialists (PES). When I visited Pierre Kanuty, who handles international relations for the Parti Socialiste in Paris at the end of January, he stressed just how important supporting the socialist MSZP in Hungary was by holding the meeting there.

This message was underscored by the PES president, Sergei Stanishev, who spoke at the rally for 10,000 MSZP supporters in Budapest on Saturday addressed by party leader Attila Mesterhazy, which I attended. Stanishev attacked the Fidesz leader and Hungarian Prime Minister, Victor Orban, for “not understanding democracy”. On Monday Orban’s government passed major constitutional amendments that made his previously illegal legalisation legal. It is widely believed it will impact on the rule of law and respect for fundamental rights. Stanishev slammed Orban’s “assault on democracy” and urged a postponement of the decision. The President of the European Parliament, Martin Schultz and the Council of Europe General Secretary Thorbjorn Jagland had also called on Orban to back down and to refer the legislation to the Venice Commission of the Council of Europe for an opinion. No prizes for guessing that the Hungarian Premier ignored such calls. In Stanishev’s words: “Mr. Orban, like all populists does not have the interests of the people at heart and sees democracy as little more than an obstacle”.

However a bigger shock came later on Saturday when Sergei Stanishev addressed the PES delegates. Stanishev is the former Bulgarian Prime Minister (2005 -2009) and is leader of the socialist BSP. On May 12 Bulgaria will hold a general election after the people of that country took to the streets and got rid of Byoko Borrisov, a right wing populist prime minister in the same mould as Hungary’s Orban.

Stanishev urged PES delegates to come to his country for May 12. However he did not want them to campaign for his BSP but to monitor the elections. He stated that other European politicians looked at him in disbelief when he told them there were no guarantees that Bulgaria’s elections would be fair and free. International observers and PES delegates were needed at the polling stations and the counts.

How could an EU nation such as Bulgaria rig the ballots and get away with it? In exactly the same way as Orban in Hungary rides roughshod over the constitution ignoring the European Parliament and Council of Europe.

It is clear that with the breakdown of trust in the institutions in Spain, the authoritarian governments in Hungary and Bolivia, democracy in Europe is in grave danger.

In Budapest I was told of families who would not speak openly of their support of the MSZP because they feared for their jobs. Police wouldn’t call but a tax inspector certainly would. Women who were party activists found that jobs in the public services were barred to their children. People who spoke out against the Hungarian government or who were involved in union campaigns faced similar obstacles. Where the media is under attack and the one radio station that supports a liberal agenda Orban wants closed down.

It is then you realise the true frailty of democracy and the urgent need for all of us to speak out to defend it in Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria - in other countries in the EU and the wider world.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on March 15 2013)