The seventh election since 2021: Bulgaria is searching for a way out of the political crisis

Bulgaria has been trying for four years to find a way out of the political crisis. It is doubtful that Sunday's elections will bring the hoped-for stability in the European Union member state with a population of 6.5 million people after the last six elections in April 2021, July 2021, November 2021, October 2022, April 2023 and June 2024. Many are already preparing for poll No. Eight in the spring.

According to a Gallup poll, 62% of Bulgarians do not believe that the elections will be fair. The most serious problem is vote buying, which will become even more important given the low expected voter turnout – most recently in June it was around 34 percent – European news portal Euractiv writes. In a report issued in September, the OSCE election observation mission called for clarification of vote-buying allegations surrounding the June elections.

Opinion polls: Conservatives in lead, second place unclear

With between 24 and 26 percent of the vote, polls indicate that the conservative European Citizens Party led by former Prime Minister Boyko Borissov is the likely winner of the election. There is likely to be a close race for second place between the pro-European conservative-liberal coalition “We Keep Changing – Democratic Bulgaria” (PP/DB) and the right-wing populist pro-Russian Ennahda party. According to the poll, the percentage of both parties ranges between 15 and 17 percent.

Forming a government may not be an easy task for the GERB party; Borissov will have to reach an agreement with at least two other political parties. The pro-European alliance PP/DB is considered a safe partner – although the two have a turbulent past, as a look back four years shows.

The wave of protests: 2020 as a turning point

The political crisis began in 2020, when a wave of protests against government corruption pushed the country into a state of emergency. The focus of the protests has been on Prime Minister Borissov, a politician who could become the winner of Sunday's election.

Established parties began to falter: in the wake of the protests, two Harvard graduates, Kirill Petko and Asen Vasiliu, founded the People's Party (“Continuous Change”), created as an alternative anti-corruption platform – for many a glimmer of political viability. He hopes. But they also failed to form a stable and viable government. Since 2023, they have been working alongside the Alliance for a Democratic Bulgaria under the name PP/DP.

Fragmented and divided

The big question after Sunday is who GERB and the PP/PD will bring into the future government as a third partner – or perhaps even a fourth. This is where the Turkish Minority Party (DPS) comes into play, which has now split into two camps, and has always positioned itself as the “guarantor of ethnic peace” and has often been the deciding factor in government formation in the past. The Social Democratic Party sees itself as representing the interests of the Turks, who, at around nine percent of the population, constitute the largest minority in Bulgaria.

The force, which was the third strongest of the two lists, will compete on Sunday after a leadership dispute. On the one hand, there is the New Alliance for Rights and Freedoms (APS) founded by Ahmet Dogan, the party's founder, which may reach around eight percent. On the other hand, according to polls, the DPS-NN party of Deljan Piovski, the former media mogul who was sanctioned for corruption, is right behind. On the question of whether the two parties could be suitable as potential coalition partners, the opinions of the GERB and PP/DB parties differ, with the latter ruling out cooperation.

Pro-Russian parties are on the rise

According to an analysis by the Balkan Insight news site, the biggest beneficiaries of the dispute are pro-Russian forces. The pro-Russian far-right movement entered Parliament for the first time at the end of 2021, with 4.86 percent of the votes. They have now tripled that number and are now competing for second place. Rebirth's closeness to the Kremlin was evident, for example, in submitting a law to Parliament requiring NGOs supported by international donors to be included in a similar registry as “foreign agents.”

Marijan Sapio of the Sofia Democracy Research Center believes that the internal political division in Bulgaria reflects the larger ideological conflicts between the West and Russia. Some parties are calling for closer ties with Moscow, while others are calling for greater integration with the European Union and NATO. The division among the population is exacerbated by the Kremlin's effective disinformation campaigns.

Little hope of forming a stable government

In an analysis for Euractiv, Bulgarian journalist Nikolo Krasin does not seem very optimistic about the future regarding Sunday's elections. There is little hope that the country's deep political crisis will end with the formation of a stable government.