In the parliamentary elections in Bulgaria on Sunday, conservatives and liberals fought a neck-and-neck race. According to post-election polls, both Boyko Borissov’s conservative Gerb party and Kiril Petkov’s liberal and pro-Western reform party PP received around 25 to 26 percent of the vote.
If these forecasts for the fifth Bulgarian parliamentary elections are confirmed within two years, forming a stable government will be a tricky task.
Opinion polls had predicted a close race between the parties of the two former heads of government in the fifth Bulgarian parliamentary election in two years. The poorest member state of the EU has been in a political crisis for years.
In 2020, months of anti-corruption protests rocked the government of then-Prime Minister Borissov, who ruled Bulgaria for almost a decade before being ousted in 2021. Since then, all elections have resulted in fragmented parliaments, with neither party able to form a functioning government.
The already fragile political climate in Bulgaria became even more explosive with the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Although Bulgaria is a member of the EU and NATO, many people continue to feel close ties to Russia historically and culturally. Among other things, Russia is revered as the country that ended the Ottoman Empire’s rule over Bulgaria in 1878.