Momchil Nekov Will Take His Seat in the European Parliament

Momchil Nekov, the No. 15 candidate in the list of the Bulgarian Socialist Party for the European elections, will take his seat in the European Parliament, reports Focus agency. 

After days of speculations in the Bulgarian-language media, Nekov, who won the preferential vote of the BSP supporters and displaced the party leader Sergei Stanishev from the top position on the ballot, broke his silence and said he got the unanimous support of the Sofia party organization and will become an MEP. 

“I would like to state clearly, that I do not intend to participate in other people's battles and get entangled in controversies,” Nekov told Focus.

Nekov thanked those who voted for him and promised them that their voice will be heard in Europe. 

The BSP leadership tried to explain the landslide preferential vote for Nekov with a lucky coincidence of the party number and Nekov's on the ballot – 15 and claimed the voters got confused.  

Boyko Borisov, leader of the opposition party GERB, which won the European elections, accused BSP of deliberately controlling the vote by instructing the voters in some polling stations to pick a number from the preferential list. 

Data of the Central Electoral Commission shows that voters of almost all parties and coalitions got somewhat confused and crossed out both the party number and the number of the candidate, coinciding with it. The largest number of confused voters, however, were those of BSP – 68%.