Bulgaria: A political change that Europe shouldn't neglect 9/7 [EN]
For the third time since 1989, Bulgarian voters have inflicted a massive "no" to their political class.
The GERB party (a Bulgarian language shortcut for "Citizens for an European Development of Bulgaria") got 116 of the available 240 seats in the one-cameral parliament of Sofia. Their nearly 40% of the more than 60% vote, propelled the vociferous major of the capital Sofia, Boiko Borissof, into the seat of prime minister.
(Borissov, the virtually nominated prime minister, said on July 9, 2009: I have a program of support to the legal officers who are charged with corruption cases, we are going to invest massively into infrastructure and in European cooperation ... [Photo: Sofia Echo, Krassimir Yuskesseliev])
At the European elections of last month it was already impossible to deny, that Borissovs party was going to carry the national elections, scheduled for July 5.
The high level of participation in the election helped to justify the GERB victory, in spite of frequent vote-buying, an ethnic Turkish vote and "election tourism" on an unprecented scale.
In 1990, Bulgarian voters chased the historic Todor Zhivkov gerontocracy. In 2001, they invested their hopes in the former king Simeon. Every time, they were disappointed. Will the Borissov landslide of 2009 be their ultimate revenge?
Will the third Bulgarian electoral revolution finally bring peace and progress?
In recent years, I had the opportunity to spend some time in the country.