The ethnic Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) almost received a serious blow to their election hopes last week. The party did not succeed in registering their MP candidates in their important Blagoevgrad constituency within the stated deadline.

The MRF representative carrying the MP candidate list to Blagoevgrad missed by 45 minutes the 7pm deadline for registration with the Regional Election Commission-Blagoevgrad (REC) last Thursday. The delay was due to a traffic jam in Sofia, caused by the Bulgarian Socialist Party's election rally, and blockages caused by accidents on the Sofia-Blagoevgrad road.

The MRF had appealed the REC's decision to the Central Election Commission (CEC), and the CEC's decision that the registration deadline was at 7pm last Thursday - in front of the Supreme Administrative Court.

On Tuesday, the CEC cancelled the decision of the REC not to register the MRF MP candidates for participation in the June 17 parliamentary elections. According to the Election Law, the CEC decision is final.

The Blagoevgrad region has high concentrations of ethnic Turks and Bulgarian Muslims, whose votes are crucial for the MRF's election hopes on June 17, and could prove decisive in the party's attempts to pass the four per cent parliamentary threshold. The MRF had two MPs from this constituency elected into the 38th Parliament.

Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov and MRF leader Ahmed Dogan discussed the Blagoevgrad case on Monday. "Our position is that the Blagoevgrad problem should be resolved. There are 25,000 to 30,000 voters in that region who need to have some guarantee for their votes," said Dogan after the meeting.

Dogan also said he did not see the Blagoevgrad case as a threat to the ethnic peace in Bulgaria. His comments were a response to media reports that MRF representatives have said the refusal to register the election list in Blagoevgrad would jeopardise ethnic peace.