Bulgaria’s do-over elections were too close to call as former Bulgarian prime minister Boyko Borissov’s party was running neck and neck with an anti-establishment group led by a talk show host and pop star.
The result might produce a hung parliament and extend a political crisis that has hampered the nation’s efforts to improve the EU’s lowest living standards and worst corruption. Bulgaria is also struggling to catch up vaccinating against COVID-19, where it ranks last in the bloc.
Borissov’s Gerb party won 23.9 percent, followed by There Is Such a People, known as ITN, led by TV star Stanislav Trifonov, with 23.7 percent, according to results with 95 percent of votes counted yesterday.
Photo: Reuters
The Socialists were third with 13.6 percent, followed by the anti-graft Democratic Bulgaria with 12.6 percent. Exit polls and earlier results showed ITN winning by a narrow margin.
Bulgarian President Rumen Radev will give the winner of the election the first chance to create a ruling coalition.
If it fails, the second-placed party gets a turn. If that does not work, a third will be chosen by the president for a last try before new elections are called.
Trifonov yesterday said that ITN would not go into a coalition, but would seek to form a government on its own.
In the initial ballot held in April, a better-than-expected showing from ITN blocked Borissov from a fourth term, as all other political parties refused to work with Gerb in government.
With voters flocking to new protest parties calling to sweep out the nation’s scandal-prone elite, no one managed to muster majority support for a Cabinet, which triggered a re-run of the vote.
“The parallel count showed that the winner in this election is There Is Such a People,” ITN Deputy Chairman Toshko Yordanov said on Trifonov’s 7/8 TV channel late on Sunday. “The votes from abroad still haven’t arrived. I hope that when they come, the results will be even more conclusive.”
Under Borissov, one of Europe’s longest-serving leads, the country of 7 million has remained in last place in the EU in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. While living standards have improved, they remain at about half of the bloc’s average.
Brussels has also criticized Bulgaria for failing to uphold the rule of law and has kept the country out of the passport-free travel Schengen zone.
Trifonov, a performer of the Balkan analog of gangster rap and the host of Bulgaria’s most popular late-night talk show for almost two decades, has been railing against inequality and corruption even before the nation joined the EU in 2007.
Also known as “Slavi,” he has pledged to fight a “mafia model” he says gives oligarchs with ties to organized crime sway over politics and overhaul the electoral and justice systems.
Both Borissov and Trifonov say they favor deepening ties with the EU, although each has voiced resistance to the bloc’s efforts to open membership talks with North Macedonia, citing long-standing historical disputes.
All mainstream parties are refusing to rule with Gerb, creating an enormous hurdle for Borissov to clinch a new term.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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