HUNGARIANS BELIEVE THEIR POLITICIANS ARE CORRUPT

When Transparency International issued its report on election spending on Monday the section that captured the headlines was that showing that Fidesz would spend over double the legal limit – and get away with it. Fidesz stayed quiet on this revelation but needless to say the opposition parties took to the social media immediately.

However the last paragraphs of the report were ignored by all the parties. The simple reason for that is rightly or wrongly the majority of Hungarians believe their politicians are corrupt.

Commissioned by TI, the polling agency Psyma assessed public attitudes concerning the campaign. The findings show that only 8 per cent of the people expect a clean campaign, assuming that the parties will only make use of legal means before the elections. The conclusion has to be that up to 92 per cent did not.

According to the poll, the majority of the public thinks that both the ‘left-wing alliance to change the government’ (62 per cent) and Fidesz-KDNP (55 per cent) use funds from corrupt sources in their campaign, and every second person thinks the same about the far right Jobbik.

TI, the watchdog association K-Monitor and the investigative online portal Atlatszo.hu (Hungarian for ‘transparent’) believe an anti-corruption minimum programme is needed and it is in everybody’s interest to have one.

They have developed their anti-corruption minimum programme which can be found at www.ezaminimum.hu. The recommendations of the programme have been drawn up so that a quarter of a century after the political transition Hungarians can finally take substantial measures against the misuse of public funds.

The aim is to gain the support of decision-makers with influence on legislation, and the broadest possible non-governmental cooperation for this initiative, overwriting political lines.

The programme makes recommendations primarily in the areas of party and campaign financing, public procurement, asset declarations, conflict of interest/revolving door, the management of national assets, and the rule of law.

Sándor Léderer, director of K-Monitor stated: “The country and the legislation have changed significantly over the past 25 years, but now breakthrough has been achieved in the fight against corruption.” 

TI and its partners argue that corruption causes immeasurable economic and societal damages; its elimination therefore needs to be in the interest of all political actors. No party striving to get into the parliament can afford to ignore this problem said Sándor Léderer.

Tamás Bodoky, the editor in chief of the portal reported: “The website atlatszo.hu is receiving reports uncovering wrongdoing linked to the election campaign.” He added that all substantiated reports will be dealt with using the tools of fact finding and investigative journalism.

Of course political corruption is not restricted to Hungary but is European wide. Surveys in Spain have shown that around 90 per cent of people questioned believed both their politicians and political system was corrupt. It is a perception the EU urgently needs to tackle across all member States.

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on March 21 2014)

FIDESZ WILL SPEND MORE THAN TWICE THE LEGAL LIMIT IN HUNGARIAN ELECTION...AND GET AWAY WITH IT

The Hungarian General Election takes place on Sunday April 6. The spotlight has been on the far right party, Jobbik, which will be fielding a national list at the polls and says it is seeking an outright victory (pun intended).

However it is extremely unlikely that Jobbik would win but instead the odds are Fidesz will be returned to power. The left alliance led by the socialists MSzP and including the country’s liberals obviously is fighting to prevent that from happening. Yet a victory for the left would be to slash Fidesz’s current massive majority, which has seen it abuse Hungary’s democratic and civil rights and indeed to mimic Jobbik in its populist statements and actions. This has caused outrage in Washington and EU capitals.

Hungary’s general election campaign might be free but it will be far from fair. This has been highlighted this week after a report from Transparency International Hungary (TI), K-Monitor and Atlatszo.hu. They have united their efforts to find out how much parties are spending on their campaigns.

At their press conference on Monday in Budapest, they have introduced the website kepmutatas.hu (Hungarian for hypocrisy), where the public can continuously follow how much each party is paying for their campaign.

In a statement they pointed out: “It is already blatantly obvious that the Fidesz-KDNP party (with the help of the Civil Alliance Forum /CÖF/ and the government) will exceed twice the campaign spending limit of one billion forints prescribed by legislation. However, it looks like this excessive spending will go without any consequences.”

The election campaign has over two weeks to run but it is already clear that until the end of February, Fidesz spent more than 2 billion, the left-wing Kormányváltás (Hungarian for ’change of government’) 680 million, while Jobbik 650 million and LMP 310 million forints. The TI, K-Monitor and Atlatsozo.hu  figures do not contain all the spending of the parties occurred in March, so numbers will grow further in the run-up to the elections.

The spending limit set by law is 1 billion. TI’s programme for the assessment of campaign spending examines all means of campaigning, by monitoring public billboards, media advertisements, direct marketing tools (postal letters, SMS messages, phone calls, personal contact), and also party events. The anti-corruption organisation also calculated the expenditure of parties on their campaign team, opinion polls, and promotional items.

TI says it is clear from the figures currently available that Fidesz has already exceeded the legally prescribed limit, if the governmental and civil advertisements supporting the party are taken in to account. Parties may spend 1 billion forints on their campaigns, of which 700 million forints may come from public funds.

The campaign of governing parties is also aided by advertisements of pseudo NGOs (the so-called GO-NGOs), such as the Civil Alliance Forum (CÖF), which on paper is independent from any political force, but is in reality blatantly campaigning in support of Fidesz. According to TI’s calculations, the price of CÖF’s campaign between November and February amounted to 570 million forints.

Not only pseudo-non-governmental organisations, but also the government itself is sponsoring Fidesz’s campaign. The government gave Fidesz a gift of 540 million forints, as this is how much the 'Hungary is performing better' campaign and the campaign advertising the utility price cuts that lay the foundations of the governing party’s election campaign have cost since November.

The billboards commissioned by GO-NGOs and government have so far cost altogether about 1 billion forints. As these support directly the campaign of Fidesz, TI added this amount to the party’s campaign expenses. But even without the campaign costs of CÖF and the government, Fidesz-KDNP's campaign costs have already reached 940 million, which is very close to the legally allowed limit of 1 billion, even though elections are still more than one month away.

Miklós Ligeti, TI's Legal Director stated: The new legislation on campaign financing is not suitable for eliminating campaign-related corruption. The parliament managed to adopt regulations, which the parties do not even have to break, if they want to spend unchecked on their campaigns".

Ligeti explained, the new legislation that entered into effect on January 1st does not prohibit the outsourcing of the campaign, that is, it does not deal with the spending of NGOs with close ties to parties, and does not limit government campaigning in any way. Under the legislation, the tariffs of public billboards do not need to be disclosed, which immensely contributes to the lack of transparency in campaign finance. Political advertisements in electronic media are free of charge, a step forward TI would theoretically welcome, but the way this regulation is put into practice annuls all its advantages. There are signs that commercial TV channels do not want to deal with the advertisements of political parties (with one major commercial channel only broadcasting government advertisements), and in addition, public media is heavily biased towards the government parties.

A further incomprehensible element of the regulation on campaign financing is that while independent electoral candidates - rightly - have to account for all public subsidies to the last forint, and if unsuccessful, will have to repay these, political parties have no such obligation. As TI warned several times in the past, there is a possibility that several parties only participate in the election to gain access to the generous allowance ensured by the state. For parties to have a nationwide candidate list, they need to collect 500 signatures in each of the 27 constituencies, and in return they are entitled to almost 149 million forints in public subsidies, which amount - depending on the recommendations collected – may climb as high as 600 million forints. In addition, the Hungarian Court of Auditors does not investigate the spending of unsuccessful 'sham parties' ex officio, but only in reported cases. The only positive element of the new legislation on campaigning is that the tariffs of political advertisements in the print media are made public.

So far, the experience with TI’s campaign monitoring suggests that Fidesz makes the most use of the loopholes of the campaign financing regulation. As a result, TI believes that the elections will be free, but not fair on many points.

And of course the free does not apply in the financial sense.

(One Forint is equal to around 0.0027 Sterling, 0.0032 euro and 0.0047 US$)

(The above article was published in the London Progressive Journal on March 18 2014)

SPANIARDS BELIEVE THEIR POLITICAL PARTIES ARE CORRUPT

The article based on the findings from Transparency International on its Global corruption Barometer was squeezed in at the bottom of the Spanish newspaper. This isn’t because the editor thought it unimportant it is just that the reports on the various corruption cases engulfing the centre right Partido Popular left little space.

Likewise there just isn’t space in this article to even given an overview of such cases as “Gürtel” and “Bárcenas”, which lead to the very top of the governing PP. However I will mention that Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is pretending the “Bárcenas” case, revolving around former PP treasurer Luis Bárcenas and his numerous secret accounts abroad, simply did not happen. This despite Rajoy possibly being a beneficiary of part of these funds and refusing to sack Bárcenas when he took over from José María Aznar. Meanwhile Aznar has offered to come back and save the nation from the crisis and Rajoy even though Bárcenas was his treasurer and the Aznar links to this corruption case go very deep indeed. The PP now has major figures such as Esperanza Aguirre calling on Rajoy to recognise the irregularities and to undertake an internal party reform – “because Spain needs a clean PP”. Some hope.

Aguirre was speaking inside the PP’s regional executive meeting in Madrid. Outside were some 500 protestors calling for Rajoy to resign. There were cries of “PP, thieves, we want resignations” and “Rajoy and Cospedal, to Soto del Real”, Cospedal is the secretary general of the PP and president of Castilla-La Mancha regional government: the Soto del Real a prison where Bárcenas is being held.

So what does the Spanish man and woman on the street make of all this? Not a lot: indeed the majority view political corruption as being one of the major problems facing Spain.

In the CIS opinion polls in 2013 corruption has been at either number two or three in the preoccupations of Spaniards. This has been borne out by the Transparency International Global Barometer with 114,000 people being questioned in 107 countries.

According to Transparency International Spain is one of the countries where corruption is perceived to be “a very serious problem”. Spain scores 4.5 out of 5 on the corruption rating whereas the international average is 4.1. Spain is also third amongst European countries where corruption is a major concern to citizens after Greece and Portugal.

Nor has the corruption stopped: indeed Spaniards believe it has grown since 2011. Two out of three Spaniards questioned were indignant over the corruption levels (the famous “Los Indignados” of street protests) which is far higher than the international average of 53 per cent.

Spaniards are in no doubt of where the corruption lies. A staggering 83 per cent point to the political parties followed closely by Parliament itself. In contrast the worldwide view is that the major focuses of corruption are the police and civil servants – public employees and not politicians.

The problem for Spain’s political parties is that it is not just the Partido Popular that is immersed in sleaze. The opposition socialist PSOE, which has its own numerous corruption cases, is viewed in a similar light. Hence PSOE’s reluctance to try and force the PP to call an election over the Bárcenas scandal. The socialists have called on Rajoy to resign but for the PP to stay in government.

One party to be viewed favourably is Izquierda Unida which has been picking up votes largely at the expense of PSOE. However even the IU’s hands are not clean with recent corruption scandals in two small municipalities on the Costa del Sol – Casares and Manilva – which have in recent years seen the far left party in control of their respective town halls.

(The above article appeared in the London Progressive Journal on July 11 2013 with versions in other publications). 

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)