When Bulgarians go to the polls on Sunday for the seventh time in more than three years, the vote is expected to deepen the political deadlock, create a democratic headache for the EU and raise the possibility of Russian intervention. be done.
From 2009 to 2021, Bulgaria’s center-right, self-described Euro-Atlantic People’s Party for European Development (GERB) ruled almost continuously. However, six parliamentary elections have been held since 2021. Although GERB won four of those elections, it failed to form a government each time, leading to political instability and widespread distrust of the public sector.
The April 2021 elections were seemingly a watershed moment in Bulgarian politics. Plagued by allegations of fraud and corruption, the GERB fell short of winning a full majority for the first time in more than a decade.
Since then, President Rumen Radev has appointed a series of interim governments, often a mix of ideologically opposed parties, which failed to govern effectively and eventually collapsed. A new election was triggered.
The country’s latest coalition government, appointed after the June 2023 elections, is an alliance between GERB and the centre-right Democratic Forces Union (SDS) with the centrist liberal PP-DB and We Continue the Change. It was made up of a coalition. (PP) Party and the Bulgarian Democratic Party (DB). The coalition government was hampered from the start by personal rivalries and mistrust, leading to its collapse after just nine months.
“GERB-SDS and PP-DB were serious political opponents,” Simeon Slavchev, a member of the Bulgarian Association of Legal Professionals, told parliament. Due to frequent internal conflicts, the coalition government was not limited to a limited policy agenda, but its conflicts grabbed headlines. He claimed that the coalition government had led to a “complete collapse of national status, morals and values.”
The collapse of the government in March 2024 led to the most recent vote in June, coinciding with the European Parliament elections. This proposal also failed to create a clear winner with an overwhelming majority, but GERB once again received the most votes.
political paralysis
With the next elections just two days away, Bulgaria is bracing for more elections, analysts and experts say.
“My prediction is that it will be impossible to form a regular government again and new regular early elections will be held in Bulgaria in March 2025,” Slavchev said.
Meanwhile, Deputy Interior Minister Atanas Ilkov said earlier this month that his ministry had received nearly 200 allegations of vote-buying, but he did not say which political parties were involved. Such accusations have not motivated Bulgarians to return to the polls, with turnout on Sunday expected to be less than 30%, down from 34.4% in June.
“The majority of Bulgarians want a stable and predictable government after the elections on October 27,” said Andrei Kovachev, a member of the European Parliament from GERB and member of the European People’s Party (EPP) group. spoke. . “But they’ve wanted the same thing before.”
Opinion polls predict Sunday’s election will have a similar result to June, leaving parliament divided once again. GERB-SDS is expected to win again with around 27% of the vote, while the PP-DB coalition and the pro-Russian Reconstruction Party will compete for second place with around 14%. Former media mogul Derian Peevski’s centrist party, the Movement for Rights and Freedoms (DPS), is expected to win around 7% of the vote.
Experts say Peevsky’s growing presence on the political stage itself symbolizes the entrenchment of the oligarchic role in Bulgaria. He has been a member of parliament since 2009 and once owned 80% of the country’s print media distribution. In 2021, the United States and Britain sanctioned Peevski on charges of corruption, bribery and embezzlement.
More broadly, Bulgaria’s democracy is “problematic of the traditional use of state institutions for private political gain,” Ivailo Dinev, a researcher at the Center for International Studies in Eastern Europe (ZOiS), told parliament. spoke. “This leads to less trust in them and fewer voters.”
Russia’s role
The election will take place on the same weekend as Georgia’s long-awaited vote, and a week after Moldova’s EU membership referendum, which has been plagued by allegations of Russian interference.
“Eastern Europe is becoming a bigger target for Moscow’s destructive actions,” Maria Simeonova, head of the European Council on Foreign Relations’ office in Sofia, told parliament.
Bulgaria, a former satellite state of the Soviet Union, is currently divided over the issue of its eastern neighbor. Recent polls show that the far-right, pro-Kremlin Restoration Party’s support is on the rise, although the GERB remains staunchly pro-EU, according to recent polls.
If Bulgaria were to move deeper into Russia’s orbit, it would create new complications for the EU, which relies on it to implement policies across security, defense and migration. “Bulgaria borders Turkey and has a Black Sea coast, making it an important country for eastern security,” Simeonova said.
But the long-term risk beyond Russia is a decline in confidence in Bulgaria’s democratic process, she said. “Having a reliable government in Sofia is in the interest of the Euro-Atlantic community…especially in the face of authoritarian regimes that challenge the very foundations of the EU.”
