When MPs do stupid things, they should do them with less enthusiasm, election expert Prof. Mikhail Konstantinov recommended to the Bulgarian National Radio.
He commented on the amendments to the Electoral Code, because of which the sessions of the Legal Committee of the National Assembly lasted 13 hours this night and ended at 7:00 in the morning.
"There is a nice Greek proverb that when the gods want to destroy someone, they take their minds away. We are currently witnessing this in the world and in our country. I have not seen such absurdity in recent months, everyone is crazy, including this Stakhanovites. The good thing about this story is that it won't happen, which doesn't change the fact that it's a stupid activity," commented Prof. Konstantinov.
"When the Venice Commission and the "Idea" Foundation recommend not to make changes to the election rules, our MPs are considering 222 amendments to the Electoral Code. This reminds me of an older colleague of mine - a professor and mathematician, who used to say - "stupid assistant, at least I pray he's not hardworking". In this case, we are observing a lot of activity, in this case they are "working a lot", the election expert also said.
In response to Toshko Yordanov's claim that talks were held and there were 6 offers for the new election machines, the professor said that "in addition to being stupid, this work is also pathetic":
"The total price of these devices is about 50 – 55 million euros, God forbid they never appear. And it is a pity that we are destroying our electoral system for this money, and half of the money will be stolen, out of 50 million euros they will collect 20 million euros. I hope that the machines have not been bought, it would be a disaster if they were bought", the expert pointed out.
Prof. Mihail Konstantinov warned that a new technology in elections requires 5 years to become established." And he reminded that for the upcoming early parliamentary elections in the spring, fortunately there is no time for "this crazy experiment and there will be no such machines".
"It may be later, but they have left a loophole in the law that if there are no machines, the current ones remain. They still have to save the election protest", believes Prof. Konstantinov and added that some of our voting machines are out of order, and all of them have expired their warranty.
In many countries in Europe, all the machines have been thrown away, it is called utilization, because these machines are highly polluting. "The Netherlands, Germany, Ireland and others have thrown them away and now they vote like in the wild – on paper". "The machines remained in the USA and Russia and out of 197 countries in the world, 190 vote on paper", he pointed out.
In order not to add and change the protocols, the professor explained how this can be achieved.
"There should be independent observers in each section and the parties should train and propose healthy members of the CECs. And the problem sections are under 1000 and the parties cannot find 2000 people to observe the election process. How will these idiots govern the country, right? These are absolute incompetents who set out to govern Bulgaria, but cannot provide 2000 people. In Europe, 99% of people vote with paper, with machines only in Brussels and the surrounding villages, which is a percentage of the European population", commented Prof. Konstantinov.
According to him, machines are not needed, not so much because of the money, "but so that we do not destroy the remnants of quality in our election process, because otherwise we have destroyed trust, a dictatorship remains".