Bulgaria’s long-serving leader Boyko Borisov is facing an uphill battle to form a government after a populist party that has ruled out coalition talks with the incumbent premier came in second in elections on Sunday.
According to a partial vote count, Borisov’s Citizens for the European Development of Bulgaria party (Gerb) won 26 per cent in the vote, with 70 per cent of ballots counted, while There Is Such a People, led by popular TV personality Stanislav Trifonov, won 18.2 per cent, higher than expected.
Standing in front of his jeep under falling snow on Sunday night, Borisov — who has served as PM since 2009 except for two short interruptions — called for the creation of a grand coalition until the end of the coronavirus pandemic. Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, has the bloc’s second lowest vaccination rate and is experiencing a third wave of infections.
Borisov garnered a diminished result in large part because of popular frustration at widespread corruption that erupted in protests last summer. Transparency International says Bulgaria is the EU’s most corrupt member state.
Of the seven parties that look set to enter parliament, three, including Trifunov’s, are openly anti-Borisov. They were buoyed by the protest movement that targeted the incumbent prime minister, prosecutor-general Ivan Geshev and influential businessmen such as former politician Delyan Peevski.
“The current status quo is not possible any more, which is a partial victory of last summer’s protest,” Vessela Tcherneva, of the Sofia office of the European Council on Foreign Relations, said.
The protests, which lasted more than 100 days, were sparked by a raid in July by the interior ministry on the office of President Rumen Radev, a Borisov rival from the Socialist party.
But they were also fuelled by anger over corruption and what critics of Borisov said was a legal system that protected government allies while targeting its foes.
Gerb’s showing is significantly less than the 33.5 per cent it secured four years ago, and the party looks set to lose the capital Sofia for the first time in 15 years. The opposition Socialists came in third with 15 per cent. Turnout was 47.5 per cent, down seven points from 2017.
Trifonov, a first-time candidate, ran on an anti-corruption platform, which included calls for direct elections for the prosecutor-general, the national ombudsman and the directors of the regional directorates and the heads of the regional departments of the interior ministry.
The Movement for Rights and Freedoms, which represents ethnic Turks and has acted as post-election kingmaker, secured 9 per cent.
The Democratic Bulgaria alliance, a big sponsor of last year’s protests, won about 10 per cent, according to exit polls. The protest party Stand Up! Mafia Out! also passed the threshold to enter parliament.
Borisov, who has styled himself as a manager who built infrastructure across the country, has also faced personal allegations of graft. Over the summer, a photograph emerged of what was believed to be his bedside cabinet with a pistol and wads of cash of unknown origin totalling approximately €1m. Borisov, a former bodyguard to communist dictator Todor Zhivkov, admitted to owning a gun but said the photos had been doctored.
The process of forming a government would be time-consuming, said analysts, and that another election was possible.
Delays could hit Bulgaria’s ability to tap into a tranche of EU recovery funds and derail its plans to join the eurozone in 2024, as well as apply to the Schengen travel area.
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2021-04-05 12:47:40Z
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