Bulgaria’s GERB party, led by veteran ex-prime minister Boyko Borissov (EPP), won Sunday’s snap parliamentary elections but faces difficult negotiations to form a government with the pro-European coalition We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria and at least one other party.
Exit polls by Alpha Research show that GERB won with a comfortable lead of 26.4%. The pro-European coalition We Continue the Change-Democratic Bulgaria came in second with 14.9%, ahead of the pro-Russian radical party Revival, which obtained 12.9%.
Next was the DPS-A New Beginning of tycoon Delyan Peevski – sanctioned by the US under the Global Magnitsky Act – who won 8.9%, according to the exit polls – with most votes coming from the fragmented party of Bulgaria’s Turkish minority.
The other 8.7% of Bulgarian Turks’ votes went to the Alliance for Rights and Freedoms of DPS founder Ahmed Dogan, the same poll showed.
The pro-Russian Bulgarian Socialist Party (PES) entered the Bulgarian parliament with 8.1% of the vote, while the populist There is Such a People party won 6.8%.
If the ratio is maintained and the number of participants in the future parliament remains at seven, at least three parties will be needed to form a governing majority and elect a government, while between seven and nine will enter parliament.
Turnout was relatively low at 38%, although it was still higher than the 34.41% turnout in June, which was a historic low for parliamentary elections following the changes of 1989.
The Gallup agency predicts that Bulgaria will have a nine-party parliament, with the populist parties MECH (Sword) and Velichie (Greatness) crossing the threshold with 4.1% and 4%, respectively. If these two parties enter parliament, the populist formations will represent close to 30% of the votes.
Around 21% of the votes went to parties with pro-Russian sentiments.
“GERB is responsible for forming the government,” said former prime minister Nikolai Denkov after polling day.
The election results clearly show that Bulgaria can have at least a three-party government with the participation of the pro-European parties GERB and We Continue the Change – Democratic Bulgaria. If the two formations fail to agree, the country will go to the polls in the spring, the eighth election in four years.
(Krassen Nikolov | Euractiv.bg)