Bulgarians went to the polls yesterday in a parliamentary election expected to oust Bulgaria’s Socialist-led coalition and elevate the center-right party of Sofia’s popular mayor to power.
Polls opened at 6am and were to close at 7pm, with 6.8 million eligible voters choosing between 4,500 candidates from 14 political parties and four coalitions for parliament’s 240 seats.
The latest opinion polls have suggested Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev will pay the price for the failure of his corruption-tainted government to handle an economy hit hard by the global downturn.
His main opponent, Sofia Mayor Boiko Borisov, is tipped to score an easy victory, although possibly by too narrow a margin to form a government without seeking a coalition partner.
Borisov’s center right party has been riding high on promises to jail corrupt officials and crime bosses.
Despite securing EU membership, Stanishev’s government has been widely blamed for failing to improve the quality of everyday life in the Balkan country of 7.6 million, the poorest member of the EU.
Although unemployment stands at a relatively low 7 percent, opinion polls say more than a third of Bulgarians fear they might lose their job in the near future. And while wage increases have pushed the average salary to 300 euros (US$420), it remains the lowest in the 27-member EU.
The main reason for the eroding support, however, has been the government’s perceived failure to deal with crime and corruption.
This led Brussels to freeze millions in aid last year over fraud.
Many Bulgarians see politicians from the Socialist Party, as well as from its junior coalition partner — the mainly Turkish Movement for Rights and Freedoms — as being part of the problem rather than a credible solution.
Last month’s European Parliament elections in Bulgaria saw political parties throw accusations at each other of vote-buying, prompting prosecutors to launch several investigations. The maximum jail sentence for vote-buying in Bulgaria is six years.
Election monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe were to oversee yesterday’s vote.
Borisov and his Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party are tipped to gain up to 32 percent of the votes, with Stanishev’s Socialists lagging behind with 22 percent, a poll conducted by the National Public Opinion Center showed on Saturday. No margin of error was provided, but polls of this type in Bulgaria usually have a 3 percent margin of error.
Opinion polls suggest no party is likely to gain enough of a majority to govern alone. If Borisov wins, the Blue Coalition has indicated it could join him to help form a government. But analysts predict that an even broader coalition will be needed to secure a majority.
AFGHAN CHILD: A court battle is ongoing over if the toddler can stay with Joshua Mast and his wife, who wanted ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ for her Major Joshua Mast, a US Marine whose adoption of an Afghan war orphan has spurred a years-long legal battle, is to remain on active duty after a three-member panel of Marines on Tuesday found that while he acted in a way unbecoming of an officer to bring home the baby girl, it did not warrant his separation from the military. Lawyers for the Marine Corps argued that Mast abused his position, disregarded orders of his superiors, mishandled classified information and improperly used a government computer in his fight over the child who was found orphaned on the battlefield in rural Afghanistan
EYEING THE US ELECTION: Analysts say that Pyongyang would likely leverage its enlarged nuclear arsenal for concessions after a new US administration is inaugurated North Korean leader Kim Jong-un warned again that he could use nuclear weapons in potential conflicts with South Korea and the US, as he accused them of provoking North Korea and raising animosities on the Korean Peninsula, state media reported yesterday. Kim has issued threats to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively numerous times, but his latest warning came as experts said that North Korea could ramp up hostilities ahead of next month’s US presidential election. In a Monday speech at a university named after him, the Kim Jong-un National Defense University, he said that North Korea “will without hesitation use all its attack
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris is in “excellent health” and fit for the presidency, according to a medical report published by the White House on Saturday as she challenged her rival, former US president Donald Trump, to publish his own health records. “Vice President Harris remains in excellent health,” her physician Joshua Simmons said in the report, adding that she “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” Speaking to reporters ahead of a trip to North Carolina, Harris called Trump’s unwillingness to publish his records “a further example
RUSSIAN INPUT: Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov called Washington’s actions in Asia ‘destructive,’ accusing it of being the reason for the ‘militarization’ of Japan The US is concerned about China’s “increasingly dangerous and unlawful” activities in the disputed South China Sea, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told ASEAN leaders yesterday during an annual summit, and pledged that Washington would continue to uphold freedom of navigation in the region. The 10-member ASEAN meeting with Blinken followed a series of confrontations at sea between China and ASEAN members Philippines and Vietnam. “We are very concerned about China’s increasingly dangerous and unlawful activities in the South China Sea which have injured people, harm vessels from ASEAN nations and contradict commitments to peaceful resolutions of disputes,” said Blinken, who
RSS