The Constitutional Court declared the election of 16 members of parliament, including the finance minister, illegal

The Constitutional Court declared the election of 16 members of parliament illegal. The court's decision is published on the institution's website.

In November last year, the Constitutional Court admitted five cases for consideration on the merits, all of which challenged in 52 sections the legality of the elections for members of parliament in the 51st National Assembly held on October 27. The court united the five cases for joint consideration.

You can see the Constitutional Court's decision here.

The election of the following deputies is illegal, according to the decision of the Constitutional Court:

Esheref Esheref, elected as a member of parliament in the Second electoral district - Burgas, from the ALLIANCE FOR RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS - APS coalition;

Svetoslav Todorov, elected as a member of parliament in the Third electoral district - Varna, from the VAZRAJDANE party;

Ivaylo Mitkovski, elected as a member of parliament in the Third electoral district - Varna, from the coalition WE CONTINUE THE CHANGE - DEMOCRATIC BULGARIA;

Deyan Petkov, elected as a member of parliament in the Fourth electoral district - Veliko Tarnovo, from the PP MECH;

Andrey Valchev, elected as a member of parliament in the Sixth electoral district - Vrachanski, from the coalition BSP - UNITED LEFT;

Rosen Ivanov, elected as a member of parliament in the Ninth electoral district - Kardzhaliyski, from the PP MECH;

Pavlin Yotov, elected as a member of parliament in the Eleventh electoral district - Loveshki, from the coalition GERB-SDS;

Emil Trifonov, elected as a member of parliament in the Twelfth electoral district - Montana, from the PP THERE IS SUCH A PEOPLE;

Stanislav Anastasov, elected as a member of parliament in the Sixteenth electoral district - Plovdiv, from the coalition DPS-New Beginning;

Borislav Petkov, elected as a member of parliament in the Twenty-second electoral district - Smolyanski, from the PP MECH;

Alexander Nenkov, elected as a member of parliament in the Twenty-third electoral district - Sofia, from the GERB-SDF coalition;

Ivan Kyuchukov, elected as a member of parliament in the Twenty-fifth electoral district - Sofia, from the PP IMA TAKAV NAROD;

Viktor Papazov, elected as a member of parliament in the Twenty-fifth electoral district - Sofia, from the REVIVAL party;

Metin Kachan, elected as a member of parliament in the Twenty-seventh electoral district - Starozagorski, from the DPS-New Beginning coalition;

Alexander Markov, elected as a member of parliament in the Thirty-first electoral district - Yambolski, from the PP THERE IS SUCH A PEOPLE, designated as elected by Decision No. 3998-NS of 31.10.2024. of the Central Election Commission for the announcement of the elected members of parliament in the 51st National Assembly.

 In addition, the Constitutional Court rejects the requests of members of arliament from the 50th and 51st National Assemblies for the establishment of the illegality in whole of the elections for members of parliament, held on October 27, .

 The Court leaves without consideration the request of 58 members of parliament from the 50th National Assembly for the establishment of the illegality of the elections for members of parliament, held on October 27, 2024, in 15 Pleven electoral district and 25 Sofia electoral district.

The Constitutional Court sends a copy of the decision to the National Assembly, to the Central Election Commission and to the petitioners

Chronology

The case began at the end of November 2024. after five complaints, which demanded the full or partial annulment of the election results on the grounds that they were manipulated. The first complaint was filed by the ITN, the second - by "Velichie", which did not enter the National Assembly "by a hair's breadth". After them, complaints were filed by the deputies of the PP-DB, who also filed the request for the declaration of the vote of the BOETS association. The latter was signed by deputies of te "BSP-United Left" and the APS.

 The Constitutional Court ordered an inspection of 2204 polling stations out of a total of 12,000 in the country. Although the Electoral Code requires the court to rule on such a case within two months, it lasted about five.

While the case was ongoing, one of the experts - Prof. Krasimir Kalinov, announced that bags with election papers in which the ballots were missing arrived for the inspection. The constitutional judges asked the CEC to recalculate the election results based on the data from the verification, in which experts appointed by the Constitutional Court participated.

The verification in question showed changes in the number of valid votes distributed among the lists of parties and coalitions in nearly half of the verified polling stations, as well as discrepancies in invalid ballots in one third of the verified polling stations.

The CEC, for its part, assigned the task to the "Information Service", which by law deals with computer processing of the election results. The state company announced that they had been sent protocols from sections in which zeros were entered instead of votes. These turned out to be the sections in which the bags were empty or partially empty. Then, "Information Service" turned to the prosecutor's office about the fact that ballots were missing in seven sections and the number zero was entered as the total number of votes from them. The prosecutor's office, in turn, requested from the Constitutional Court all papers related to the case.

It also came to the unprecedented statement of the Chairperson of the Constitutional Court, Pavlina Panova, who said that state institutions were sabotaging the completion of the case by delaying the submission of the recalculated election results to the court.

Representatives of the CEC and "Information Service", as well as experts on the case, were heard in parliament, and the deputies adopted a declaration requesting the Constitutional Court to publish the materials on the case. In the end, the state-owned Information Services Company submitted the recalculated election results to the Constitutional Court yesterday.

However, all this institutional chaos led to protests in Sofia and several cities in the country, under the slogan "WHO is blocking the Constitution". According to analysts, regardless of the court's decision, public trust in the election process has been violated, and political forces have also started talking about another change to the Electoral Code.