Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) chairperson Konstantin Penchev announced that 438 trials of appeals against the municipal elections results had been launched.

Appeals against the results had been presented before all 28 administrative courts in Bulgaria, Penchev said as quoted by Focus news agency.

The trials would be scheduled for the end of November 2007.

Most of the complaints referred to law violations, which corrupted the results of the election, such as propaganda on the day of the elections, vote-buying, incorrect protocols and invalid ballots.

Some of the appeals resulted in trials, others were rejected as unacceptable, most often because they appealed the results of the first round, he said.

Appellation before the court “was a kind of third round of the elections,” Penchev said. Not only “small parties, eager for a few additional days of media life”, but also large parties thrived on court complaints, he said.

Judicial control was necessary, but within limits,Penchev said.

Some large parties would most probably try to pressure judges, but “if there had been vote-buying, there will not be court decision-buying,” Penchev said. The second instance, SAC, would see to it.

On November 9 2007, Anatolii Iordanov, Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) mayor candidate for Lovech, tabled before the regional administrative court an appeal against the election of Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) candidate Mincho Kazandjiev. Iordanov claimed that the election results in several election sections had been manipulated and he insisted on manual re-counting of votes, Bulgarian news agency BTA said.

Dobrich Administrative Court ordered a technical investigation in the trial over the election of the municipal mayor, BTA said. BSP, Movement for Rights and Freedom (MRF), ultra-nationalist movement Ataka and a local coalition appealed against the election of GERB candidate Detelina Nikolova. The investigation has to find out why the number of the electors in the different elections lists was different. The court rejected the plaintiffs’ request for witnesses to be interrogated on vote-buying.

On November 8 2007, Shoumen Administrative Court postponed implementation of the decision by the regional election commission on the election of municipal councillors after a complaint by GERB mayor candidate Vesselin Zlatev. Zlatev had demanded the annulment of the election results after losing to his BSP opponent. The court’s sitting was scheduled for November 14.

Rousse Administrative Court started a trial after six appeals against the election of municipal councillors. Two independent municipal councillor candidates and four parties and coalitions of parties had tabled the complaints. The plaintiffs claim that there were a number of invalid ballots, empty envelopes and errors in the ballot counting.