site.btaCandidates for New Election Commission to Be Heard on June 12

Proposed candidates for Bulgaria's new Central Election Commission (CEC) will be heard on June 12, provided all requirements have been met, President Iliana Iotova said on Tuesday at the conclusion of her consultations with the parliamentary parties and coalitions on the composition of the electoral authority.

The hearing will take place at the presidential institution at 12:00 p.m. on Friday. After the candidates have been heard, a decree establishing the new CEC will be issued as soon as possible, Iotova added.

"We are providing sufficient time. After a specialized commission of experts within the presidential administration reviews whether there are any irregularities in the candidates' documents, you [the parliamentary parties] will be notified promptly so that any issues can be corrected in a timely manner," the President noted.

She explained that the appointment of the new CEC had been delayed because numerous partial local elections, including one in a borough of the capital, are scheduled to take place across the country on June 15. "We wanted this electoral cycle to be completed by the current composition of the CEC, which has sufficient experience to ensure that there are no omissions," the president said.

During the consultations, Progressive Bulgaria nominated Georgi Horozov for CEC chairperson. The party also proposed lawyers Desislava Abrasheva, Zinaida Zlatanova and Ivan Karchev, cybersecurity specialist Yordan Vasilev, Lazarina Haralampieva and political scientist Stoyanka Tsvetkova as members of the commission.

GERB-UDF nominated lawyer Yordanka Gancheva for the position of secretary of the Central Election Commission.

Raya Nazaryan noted that the second-largest parliamentary group should receive the position of CEC secretary. However, if such an agreement is not reached, GERB-UDF proposes Yordanka Gancheva for deputy chairperson of the commission. Lawyers Georgi Bahanov and Anna Alexandrova were nominated as members of the CEC.

The Continue the Change - Democratic Bulgaria coalition (CC-DB) nominated Dr Alina Dobreva and Vyara Todeva for membership of the commission.

Bozhidar Bozhanov said that the coalition would not nominate a deputy chairperson as a sign of disagreement with the calculation method "or whatever this procedure is called".

The Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) nominated Ismail Osman for CEC secretary and Tsvetan Enchev for membership of the commission.

Vazrazhdane nominated lawyer Margarita Mahaeva for membership and deputy chairperson of the CEC.

Yordanka Gancheva of GERB-UDF was selected by lot as the candidate for CEC secretary after two political forces nominated candidates for the position. GERB-UDF nominated Gancheva, while the MRF nominated Ismail Osman.

After the draw selected Gancheva as the candidate for CEC secretary, the MRF announced that it was nominating Ismail Osman for deputy chairperson of the commission.

The procedure for forming the new CEC began with a dispute between the CC-DB and President Iotova. The disagreement, which emerged at the end of last week, concerns calculations made by the presidential administration to determine the allocation of seats on the new election commission. In recent days, DB Deputy Floor Leader Bozhidar Bozhanov argued that the presidential decree contained an error in calculating party quotas. He said that the current situation was unprecedented because one party held more than half the seats in Parliament while the Election Code prevented it from holding more than half the seats on the CEC. According to him, correcting the methodology would change the distribution from two seats each for the MRF and the CC-DB to three seats for the CC-DB and one for the MRF. He called on the President to amend the decree accordingly.