Zidarovo mayor Hristo Bardukov did not break the ban on election campaigning, the Regional Election Commission (REC) in Burgas has ruled. It rejected a complaint over his campaigning on Facebook as unfounded.
The complaint was emailed to the commission with a photo. The sender said the mayor had posted a call to vote with a particular ballot from his personal profile in the Facebook groups of the villages of Zidarovo and Rosen.
The profile belongs to a private person, not a media outlet, the commission said. So the post does not fall under the ban in Article 182, paragraph 4 of the Electoral Code, which applies only to media profiles.
The REC told Bardukov and all citizens to follow the rules on election campaigning.
In October, REC Burgas got the first complaint about a breach of the Electoral Code in the presidential campaign, also from Zidarovo. It was about campaign posters on electricity poles in the village, and the commission ordered them taken down.
The commission also cited paragraph 1, point 15 of the code. It does not count social networks such as Facebook and Twitter, or personal blogs, as media services. The only exception is the profiles of media outlets on them.