Истината

Two businessmen headed the ranking of all 15 candidates for mayors of the municipality of Velingrad: Fidel Beev, who has a business in fuel, transport and media, and Alexander Daskalov, manager of the Veli 97 toy factory. Fidel Beev leads with a serious lead of 5262 votes, Alexander Daskalov in the first round garnered 2555 votes. The two will compete again in a runoff on Sunday, October 2.
The third was DPS candidate Nedzhat Kehayov with 2358 leva, followed by BSP candidate and the centre-left coalition Zavarin Marov with 2192 votes, the current mayor Dr. Tsvetan Dafov from "Coalition for Velingrad" remained fifth with 2145, and the independent candidate supported by NDSV Nikolay Deliev was sixth with 1830 votes. The remaining candidates collected significantly fewer ballots, and some failed to collect even the minimum needed for municipal councillors.
The election day did not bring any special surprises. It was preceded by very hard work by the Municipal Administration and the Municipal Electoral Commission, as two days before October 26, ballots arrived with errors in the names of mayoral candidates and councillors. The OIC had to make 7 decisions declaring the ballots to be valid, as it was about technical, typographical errors.
Voter turnout was lower compared to the 1999 local elections. and parliamentary in 2001: out of 35,713 eligible voters for mayor of the municipality, 17,991 or 50.4% voted. A novelty for the voter turned out to be the large number of ballots, which led to mass errors. The total number of invalid ballots is record - about 3000 votes, which are practically wasted. The work of the sectional committee was extremely difficult, as they were tasked with the additional requirement to also count all unsubmitted ballots for all candidates.
The day went relatively calm, several parties filed complaints about campaign materials of competitors: BSP protested against invalid F ballots. Beev and Al. Daskalov, from Daskalov's headquarters filed a complaint that near the polling stations there are campaign materials, signals for lack and for their buried ballots submitted by the Green Party.
The problems came with the end of the election day. A record set Krastava, where at 7 p.m. there were over 400 voters in front of the section. The section in the village ended the vote after 2 a.m., the minutes arrived in Velingrad around 9 a.m. and the OIC had to re-count them manually. There was also a delay in one of the sections in Draginovo.
Around 3 a.m., the first serious incident occurred: Fidel Beev's billboard was lit in the direction of Kamenitsa, next to the Edelweiss Cafe. Firefighters had to intervene to prevent more serious consequences.
The results poured cold showers over all major party headquarters. Moods in the Old Council building were minor. And the next day, the political parties still had no solution as to how they would proceed for the runoff, which candidate they would support. During the days until Sunday there will be intensive negotiations, the parties will calculate their weight in the Municipal Council and will probably not get away without bargaining. But in the end - this Sunday will decide the voters.
Elena Baeva