Voter turnout among the Bulgarians living in London was very low, Svetlana Kaneva, chair of the "Luton" section in the English capital, told Radio Bulgaria. She summarizes the impressions of her colleagues from another four areas in London, in which Bulgarian vote. According to the people in the commissions, organizing elections in UK for the sixth time, there is a great waste of state money coming from sending officials from Sofia, which practically undermines the trust in local people.

"We worked with the civil servants sent from Bulgaria. They are trained and very well prepared, but we actually have coordinators appointed together with the Bulgarian embassy in London," Svetlana Kaneva expresses the opinion of the people in the commissions:

"This is the saddest thing currently floating around in our social groups - that money is being wasted and government planes and people are being sent to help with the elections. Up to this point we have all had chosen a coordinator from the embassy and we have proven that in all the sections in the UK there are very responsible and well-organized people. I have also been a state representative and until now we have never made any mistakes. On the contrary, we have solved all the problems that have arisen regarding the organization and conduct of various elections. We ask the question - why does Bulgaria spend so much money to send officials to places where there is no problem with holding elections? This time there was nothing different than the party appointments we have seen before. Nothing has changed and people were appointed or replaced at the last moment. There were also many illiterate people among them. The voice of the volunteers from the Bulgarian community in UK about the electoral process should be heard. We want it to reach the parliament in Sofia. It's sad that there are still people who don't even know how to write well in Bulgarian, but they participate in election commissions."

In general, the Bulgarians in London are satisfied that they are voting for a Bulgarian parliament, even though they were deprived of the right to elect the Bulgarian representatives in the European Parliament. They believe that the lives of people in Bulgaria depend to a large extent on solving the problems of the communities.

"It is necessary to think about facilitating the process itself, so that people can vote regardless of where they are," Svetlana Kaneva says:

"Electronic voting should be implemented and I strongly hope that one day the law will change. It will happen, if not for us, then for our children! This holding of elections with ballot boxes and ballots requires a lot of funds from Bulgaria, given that everything could be much faster and easier and every single one of our citizens would be able to vote without having to travel for hours to the polling stations."

Publication in English: Al Markov

Photos: BGNES