In Bulgaria’s June 2009 European Parliament elections, alleging that other parties were buying votes appeared to be the game that anyone could play – and some seemed keen to alleged that vote-buying was the game almost everyone was playing.
 
Ahead of the elections, the issue of vote-buying was being closely watched, against a background of similar allegations in elections in recent years.
 
Speaking after voting ended on June 7, Volen Siderov, leader of the ultra-nationalist party Ataka, levelled the allegation at the Movement for Rights and Freedoms, Ahmed Dogan’s party that is supported mainly by Bulgarians of ethnic Turkish descent; at the Bulgarian Socialist Party; and at two small right-wing parties, LIDER and Yane Yanev’s Order Law and Justice party.
 
Against a background of many allegations and media reports that the favoured suppliers of votes for sale were Bulgarians of Roma ethnicity, Yanev retorted that his party was supported by people in large cities and no one in Roma areas.
 
Yanev said that he had "curious facts" about the funding of Ataka, the eponymous newspaper and Skat, the television station closely aligned to Siderov’s party.
 
The leaders in vote-buying were the MRF, LIDER and Simeon Saxe-Coburg’s National Movement for Stability and Progress, Bulgarian news agency Focus reported Yanev as saying.
 
Boiko Borissov, whose party the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (known as GERB) won the largest share of votes in Bulgaria’s European Parliament elections, said that he hoped that the police, State Agency for National Security and prosecutors would come down hard on those who distorted the electoral process.
 
GERB chairman Tsvetan Tsvetanov said that the Government allowed vote-buying on a large scale.
 
Sergei Stanishev, Prime Minister and leader of the Bulgarian Socialist Party, told a news conference that vote-buying was one of the ugliest characteristics of Bulgaria’s democracy.
 
Close to 70 allegations of vote-buying had been received on June 7 and each was being investigated, with nine pre-trial proceedings underway so far, Stanishev said.
 
Dogan, who caused an uproar in the country’s most recent elections by describing vote-buying as a common European practice, said on June 7 that with the exception of his party, the BSP and a few other parties, every party in Bulgaria bought votes.

"We have much evidence about other political parties, but we won’t show it," Dogan was quoted by Dnevnik as saying.
 
Central Electoral Commission spokesperson Alexander Alexandrov told journalists that all allegations about vote-buying had been sent immediately to law enforcement authorities and would be forwarded to prosecutors and courts to determine if crimes had been committed.