site.btaCaretaker Government Determined to Ensure Fair Elections, Says Chief Commissioner Kandev

The caretaker Government is firmly determined to do everything within its power to ensure fair and free elections, wrote on Friday acting Chief Secretary of the Ministry of Interior, Chief Commissioner Georgi Kandev, on Facebook.

As part of a specialized police operation against crimes related to the electoral process, police officers have carried out an operation in the Montana region (Northwest Bulgaria), Kandev said. In the Mayor’s office in the village of Dolni Tsibar, a total of 197 identity cards and six passports belonging to deceased persons were found and seized, he added. Lists of names and sums of money were also discovered, with reasonable suspicions that they were connected to vote-buying activities. As a result of the operation, three people were detained, Kandev wrote. 

According to him, vote buyers use “all kinds of cynical and unacceptable methods to gain unfair advantage in elections, but the Interior Ministry is acting decisively and uncompromisingly against such practices.” 

The Montana Regional Police Directorate earlier reported that since the start of the election campaign, 23 pre-trial proceedings have been opened in the region on suspicions of vote-buying.