Bulgaria on Sunday held its eighth parliamentary election in five years, with former president Rumen Radev’s party tipped to win on a promise to fight corruption, after the anti-corruption movement sparked a long-running political crisis.
The EU’s poorest member has gone through successive governments since 2021, when anti-corruption rallies ended the conservative rule of longtime leader Boyko Borissov.
Radev, who has called for renewed ties with Russia and opposed military aid to Ukraine, was president for nine years in the Balkan nation of 6.5 million people.
He stepped down in January and now heads a new group of centrist parties, Progressive Bulgaria. Opinion polls before the election suggested that his coalition could get 35 percent of the vote in the 240-seat parliament.
The 62-year-old former air force general has said he wants to rid the country of its “oligarchic style of governance.” He backed new anti-corruption protests last year that toppled the latest conservative-backed government.
“I’m voting for change,” Decho Kostadinov, 57, told reporters after casting his vote in the capital, Sofia, adding that corrupt politicians “should leave – they should take whatever they stole and leave Bulgaria”.
