People walk past posters of Kostadin Kostadinov, leader of the Vazrazhdane party in Sofia on March 30, 2023, ahead of the parliamentary elections. The PHOTO AFP SOFIA Bulgarians vote in their fifth parliamentary election in two years on Sunday amid rising resentment towards political elites, who many see as unwilling to tackle graft and economic reforms.
Opinion polls show that the ballot will leave Bulgaria short of a functioning parliamentary majority, putting in question its ambitions to join the euro zone in the near term and effectively use European Union COVID recovery aid.
The voting starts at 7 am local time 0400 GMT and ends at 8 pm.
In the run is a coalition of the centre-right GERB party of former long-serving premier Boyko Borissov, 63, and its small Union of Democratic Forces SDS partner, as well as the newly established coalition of pro-Western Western We Continue the Change PP party and reformist Democratic Bulgaria DB ALSO READ: EU: Bulgaria could adopt the euro from 2025 if ready.
It does not solve the big question - what is the prospect of forming a government, according to Genoveva Petrova of Alpha Research.
Petrova said that the parties in Bulgaria have had four interim parliaments to realise that there is no political force at the moment that has not just an absolute majority but a large enough advantage to set the agenda.
The two coalitions have neck and neck in opinion polls, with the latest poll by Exacta Research Group showing them at 26.2 percent and 25.6 percent, respectively, and the nationalist Revival Party at 12.8 percent.
Borissov has denied that he had not done enough to stop corruption in the country during his decade of long-rule that ended in 2021, which is a accusation by many political rivals of complicating coalition building.
The two coalitions in the running want Bulgaria to maintain its pro-Ukraine stance, but President Rumen Radev, who has had so much power throughout the political instability, has pushed for a more nuanced approach.