Busses with people from Turkey stopped in front of the election sections in the municipality of Ardino in the day of the elections, mayor nominee Mehmed Dikme said.

These people got off the busses, entered the election sections and after voting, headed towards the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (MRF) headquarters to receive their money for the trip. At the end they got in the busses and left, Dikme told private channel Nova Television.

Dikme lost the election in the first round from MRF nominee Resmi Murad, mediapool.bg said. Murad won 54 per cent of the votes.

Dikme said that people from his headquarters documented “the excursions action.”

Bulgaria’s citizens, who live abroad, have the right to vote and no one can deprive them from that right. Still, in these elections for the first time over the past 15 years, 10 000 people voted in Ardino, Dikme said.

Rumours had it that people, who came from Turkey by car, received 350 leva for the expenses.

Voters from Turkey denied being paid to vote, but admitted that they arrived in Bulgaria to vote. Some of them did not know for whom they were going to vote.

Dikme’s headquarters said that some seven or eight per cent of the ballots cast in the municipality were without envelopes and nearly half of the ballots were invalid, but they were all proclaimed valid. Nearly 40 per cent of the voters entered the election booth with a companion, which is illegal, Dikme said.

He will demand the elections in Ardino to be declared invalid, mediapool.bg said.