Fed up with politicians, poverty and corruption, Bulgarians go to the polls tomorrow in an election that might deepen, not solve, the perennial political crisis in the EU’s poorest country.
Ex-communist Bulgaria’s second snap election in 17 months takes place in a country where the average monthly salary is stuck at 400 euros (US$504) and where corruption and organized crime are rife.
Every fifth household lives below the poverty line, and in a recent survey, 69 percent called the situation “unbearable.”
Economic growth is sluggish and young people cannot wait to emigrate.
The fourth-largest bank has blocked cash withdrawals since June, about 375 million euros in EU funds are frozen and the Ukraine crisis threatens to hit supplies of Russian gas this winter.
Difficult reforms need to be made in healthcare, pension and education, and the Balkan country is struggling to cope with an influx of Syrian refugees from over the border with Turkey.
The man who polls predict will come first after the vote, Boyko Borisov, a right-wing former bodyguard to Bulgaria’s communist ex-dictator, makes no bones about the challenge ahead.
“The situation is very hard, but people expect us to get our act together and take the country out of the crisis,” he told reporters on the campaign trail. “Expectations are huge and this obliges us to stop looking back and complaining, and to try and do what’s necessary for the people here.”
Whether the burly 55-year-old is up to the job is another matter, since this is the very same man who resigned as prime minister in February last year in the face of nationwide protests.
“Bulgaria will only exit from this kind of political crisis in five to seven years,” political analyst Antony Galabov told reporters. “We are only in year two.”
After Borisov quit, elections resulted in a technocrat government backed by the Socialists and the Turkish minority party MRF and headed by economics professor Plamen Oresharski.
Almost from day one, Oresharski faced protests and calls to resign and in July his government threw in the towel.
This time, Borisov’s GERB party is expected to win 36 to 37 percent of the vote, opinion polls show, ahead of the Socialists on 22 to 23 percent and the MRF on 13 percent.
The key will be the performance of smaller parties, including the far-right Ataka, polling at around 4 percent, the threshold for entering the 240-seat parliament.
With numerous investigations pointing to intimidation and vote-selling, even for food or firewood, one recent Alpha Research poll found 60 percent of people pessimistic about the elections.
“The Bulgarian parties only cater for the enrichment of their leaders. Elections do not change anything,” electrician Stoimen Pavlov, 47, told reporters, adding that he “will vote, but with disgust.”
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