For the first time in 12 years, an MP from a party other than the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) was elected in Kurdjali. The candidate of the Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria (GERB), sculptor Vezhdi Rashidov, won a seat in Parliament against Ahmed Dogan's political machine and this in itself was a major victory, because MRF's leader himself ran atop of his party's list.

How could it happen in MRF's own fortress? We spoke with Rashidov's representatives election precincts and with observers from the Civic Initiative for Free and Democratic Elections (CIFDE).

"The problems started from the very beginning on election day," says Diana Damyanova, who was the head of Rashidov's electoral headquarters. "To start, the representatives were not allowed into 90 per cent of the voting stations. There, in the region of Kurdjali, after 20 years of democracy, the term 'representative' means somebody from the same village, who just pretends to represent some other party, but actually is a member of the MRF. This is the first rule – outsiders were never allowed into these stations and nobody ever tried to win the elections here. When the GERB representatives showed up, they were chased away.

"Actually the problems began with the discovery that the many voting stations had changed addresses, but we dealt with that easily. It was more difficult to get the GERB representatives into the sections. So

The first round

that we fought between 6am and 7am was to get into the stations at all. The observers from CIFDE appeared a bit later as they were 192 people and the total number of stations in the region of Kurdjali is more than 460. So there was one CIFDE observer for every two or three stations.

"We have to admit that wherever a CIFDE observer was present, everything went easier. Their certificates had seals from the Central Electoral Commission (CEC) and said that the CEC gave them official observer status. But wherever there was no CIFDE observer, we were led on a wild goose chase for an hour. It was difficult to get in touch with the Regional Election Commission, because no one was picking up the phone, but once we did, after some quarrelling, as if by magic, we were let into all voting stations. Into all of them."

CIFDE observer Tsonka Nedeva joins in: "After that, the other problems began. They were reading in detail the certificates, the ID cards. They played with the seal, compared the ID cards. One person read, the other proof-read, they tried to delay the process, I don't know why."

Ivo Yordanov, a CIFDE observer in the village of Kostino says: "After that the election process began. The major violation that took place was the following: they give the ballot to the voter, he votes, returns the ballot to the commission, they unfold it, read it out, show it to a couple of people, and then drop it in the urn, according to all observers. I told them a couple of times that they are not allowed to unfold the ballot."

"Their explanation was ridiculous: they said the ballot was folded incorrectly. In the beginning there were five or six such attempts, but when they understood that they couldn't pull that off, they stopped it."

Nikolai Netsov, another CIFDE observer, said: "It was the other way round with me. They were giving out folded ballots. When we asked them to show to everybody that the ballot was not filled out, they said 'Oh, is this the way to do it?' When they unfolded a couple of ballots, they learned and stopped doing that. Then they tried the other trick again: when the voter comes back to drop the ballot, they attempt to unfold it. We said, 'No, do not open it now.'"

Damyanova said that these attempts were halted by about 9am after numerous tip-offs and after the party's representatives managed to declare the ballots seen by the election commission invalid. This happened thanks to the CIFDE observers, who also noticed the multiple election law violations.