Elections

I was lucky enough to be able to attend this year's Athens Democracy Forum held in association with The New York Times in the shadow of the Acropolis, in the "cradle of democracy." For three days I got to hear from politicians, entrepreneurs, and civil society leaders that democracy as we have come to know it is under stress.

Coming from 11 countries, our group of students from the Global Liberal Arts Alliance brought a diverse set of educational experiences and prior knowledge about democratic systems to the Athens Democracy Forum from October 9-11.

According to the first exit polls by Alpha Research, the results of the local elections in major cities in Bulgaria are as follows:

All of the data was collected from Alpha Research.

No surprises in Burgas - Dimitar Nikolov wins his fourth term with a crushing lead over his opponents, shows the data from the two independent exit polls following the vote in Burgas today.

Support for Dimitar Nikolov is between 64 and 67%.

The first round of the regular local elections in Bulgaria ended at 8 pm local time. The elections went smoothly without any significant violations, the Central Election Commission announced. At 6.30 pm, the voter turnout was 42.85% (2 709 340 people cast their ballots out of all 6 322 979 Bulgarians who have the right to vote at today's elections).

The People's Movement Party (PMP) and the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania (UDMR) candidates to Romania's presidency, Theodor Paleologu and Kelemen Hunor, maintained on Saturday, during a debate organised within the "Know your candidate" campaign, that a constitutional reform is needed, however each having different opinions on the topic.

Turkey's government aims for higher revenues by making changes into the existing tax regime, ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) Party Group Deputy Chairman Mehmet Muş announced on Oct. 24.
Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) submitted on Oct. 24 a new draft law to the parliament, which proposes regulations on the tax system.

A cross-party committee discussing ruling New Democracy's initiative to grant full voting rights to diaspora Greeks reached a consensus, Interior Minister  Takis Theodorikakos announced on Tuesday evening.

Lawmakers agreed that the vote will count towards the overall election result and that diaspora Greeks will be able to select among 15 (previously 12) candidates from a state list.

Main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu criticized the government move of replacing four mayors from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) with state officials.

Bucharest, Oct 22 /Agerpres/ - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MAE) announced on Monday evening having released the complete list and the interactive map of the 835 polling stations that will be organized abroad for the presidential election this November; the list and the interactive map are available at http://www.mae.ro/node/49479.