SOFIA
\nBulgarians vote on Sunday in their fifth general election in two years, a record in the European Union, amid deep divisions over the war in Ukraine.
\nRussia\u2019s invasion of its neighbor has deepened the political crisis that has engulfed Bulgaria since 2020, the worst instability since the fall of Communism.
\nThe poor Balkan nation of 6.5 million people is a member of the EU and NATO. But it is historically and culturally close to Russia.
\nThe country witnessed massive anti-corruption rallies three years ago but, contrary to protesters\u2019 hopes of a clean-up in public life, the demonstrations triggered a series of elections.
\nConservative prime minister Boyko Borisov, whose decade in office was tainted by allegations of graft, lost power in 2021.
\nBut the country\u2019s political parties have struggled since to form stable coalitions, leading to a deeply fragmented parliament and series of interim governments.
\n\u201cWhat if the results are the same as in previous legislative elections?\u201d asked Silvia Radoeva, a 42-year-old care worker.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s high time that politicians united to deal with everyday problems,\u201d Radoeva told AFP, citing \u201ccrazy prices, poverty and deplorable medical care.\u201d
\n\u201cFaced with war and inflation, (Bulgarian) society is crying out for a solution,\u201d Parvan Simeonov, a political analyst with Gallup International, told AFP.
\nThe fight against corruption has taken a back seat, leaving many 2020 protesters disillusioned.
\nThe main players in Sunday\u2019s ballot are the same as in recent elections.
\nThe latest polls put Borisov\u2019s GERB party neck-and-neck with the reformist We Continue the Change (PP), led by Harvard-educated Kiril Petkov, who was briefly premier in 2022.
\nBoth have around 25 percent support.
\nThis time, the PP has joined forces with a small right-wing coalition called Democratic Bulgaria.
\n\u201cWe find the same pattern as in other central European countries \u2014 a former leader who clings on and the other parties who refuse to ally with him, without having much else in common,\u201d said Lukas Macek, associate researcher at the Jacques Delors Institute for Central and Eastern Europe.
\nMacek sees no end to this \u201cworrying spiral of elections\u201d unless Borisov withdraws.
\n\u201cI fear the influence of pro-Russian parties in the next parliament,\u201d Ognian Peychev, a 60-year-old engineer, told AFP at a recent protest against the war in Ukraine.
\nThe ultra-nationalist Vazrazhdane party, which defends the Kremlin\u2019s war, stands to gain some 13 percent of the votes, according to polls, up from the 10 percent it won at the last general election in October.
\nThe Socialist BSP, the successor of Bulgaria\u2019s Communist Party, has also sided with Moscow and objects to sending weapons to Ukrainian forces.
\nMany in Bulgaria still look to the east, revering Russia as the country that ended five centuries of Ottoman rule in 1878.
\n\u201cBoth Petkov and Borisov are too aggressively critical of Russia,\u201d said Mariana Valkova, a 62-year-old entrepreneur who used to work in what was then the Soviet Union.
\n\u201cI\u2019d rather there wasn\u2019t a government and (President Rumen) Radev remained in charge.\u201d
\nPro-Russian Radev, who has appointed interim cabinets between the string of inconclusive elections, has denounced Petkov and his allies as \u201cwar mongers.\u201d
\nHe has also spoken out against sending arms to Ukraine.
\nAt the same time, Bulgaria\u2019s munitions factories have been running at full capacity making ammunition to be exported to Kyiv via third countries.
\nPolling stations opened at 7:00 am (0400 GMT) on Sunday.
\nThe first exit polls are expected after polls close at 8:00 p.m. (1700 GMT).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
SOFIA Bulgarians vote on Sunday in their fifth general election in two years, a record in the European Union, amid deep divisions over the war in Ukraine. Russia\u2019s invasion of its neighbor has deepened the political crisis that has engulfed Bulgaria since 2020, the worst instability since the fall of Communism. The poor Balkan nation […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323428,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-323403","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"yoast_head":"\n