Virus-hit Bulgaria holds 3rd election in a year
SOFIA: Bulgarians vote on Sunday for the third time this year, but there was litle hope that the latest general election will finally bring a stable government to fight the country’s deadliest coronavirus wave.
Polling stations opened at 7:00 am and were scheduled to close again at 8:00 pm when the first exit polls were expected to be published.
“We must all vote but I’m also afraid that it will all be in vain... I don’t have much hope,” 62-year-old Milena Stoyanova said on the eve of the election, summing up the general gloom.
While many said they will not bother to go to the polling stations, 35-year-old finance expert Petar Angelov said he would “definitely vote... for change” and “a beter future.”
Ater two previous elections in April and July returned fractured parliaments where parties failed to cobble together a coalition, will there be agreement now? “I hope that political leaders learnt their lesson and that this will push them to negotiate,” New Bulgarian University political science professor Antony Todorov said.
“We just cannot not have a government,” said Boryana Dimitrova of the Alpha Research institute, highlighting the need to tackle the worst Covid-19 wave raging in the country.
Just over 23 per cent of Bulgaria’s population of 6.9 million people is fully vaccinated, the lowest rate across the European Union.
The interim administration failed to impose stricter measures and stop new infections and deaths from spiralling.
With around 200 people dying each day in short-staffed hospitals, Bulgaria’s death rate this week was among the highest in the world. “There’s this feeling of chaos,” Todorov said. Uncertainty coupled with rising electricity and gas prices has hit the economy, and the European Commission this week lowered its annual growth forecast for Bulgaria.
The conservative GERB party of three-time premier Boyko Borisov “exploits this feeling very well” with election posters calling for “Order in the chaos,” Todorov said.
But Borisov, who faced massive anti-grat protests last year and multiple revelations about alleged past misuse of public funds, is seen as an “unacceptable” partner by most other parties.
Observers say he is unlikely to find enough support to return to power for a fourth term.
Dimitrova said voters were “inclined to vote for the parties of change, which they consider capable of forming a government.”