Elections in 70 to 80 municipalities might be appealed because of numerous reported violations, Civic Initiative for Free and Democratic Elections (CIFDE) warned on November 2 2007.

If the elections were appealed, the municipalities in question might remain without mayors for the next couple of months, CIFDE said as quoted by mediapool.bg.

CIFDE chair Iliya Bozhinov said that he expected attempts to annul election results. Municipal authorities were a profitable business. The profit from one mayor’s post ‘purchase’ was a 100 per cent, while the benefit from investment in tourism was 10 per cent, he said.

CIFDE had 6400 observers in various municipalities in the first round of the elections. They revealed numerous violations, the most popular of which was vote-buying. Some members of the election commissions were changed with people completely unprepared for the work resulted in an unprofessional approach towards the job.

Some five per cent of the election commissions had made mistakes in counting votes and had adjusted the results, CIFDE said.

Central Election Commission (CEC) said there were no grounds for the election results to be appealed. There had been no miscounting of valid votes, only errors in the numbers reported by election commissions, which had no effect on the final results. Being in a hurry, the election commission members filed the numbers in the wrong places, CEC said.

At the same time, Iliyana Iotova, Member of the European Parliament from the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), told private channel NOVA that according to signatures, 420 673 people voted for a mayor of Sofia, but according to the number of ballots cast, the number of the voters was less than 397 700. BSP said they would wait for parallel counting of the votes and may demand a second counting Sofia.

Leader of the Democratic Party Alexander Pramatarki said that these elections were suspicious and his party would demand their annulment.