Bulgaria looks set to veer sharply back into Moscow’s strategic orbit after Socialist candidate Rumen Radev won the presidency in a landslide on Sunday, forcing the resignation of center-right Prime Minister Boyko Borisov.
According to exit polls after the runoff, Radev won almost 60 percent of the vote. Tsetska Tsacheva, from Borisov’s GERB party, took just over 35 percent.
The result has plunged the impoverished Balkan state into a political crisis that will be closely monitored by the rest of the EU and NATO. The country of 7 million people occupies a sensitive position within the EU because Russia’s influence is unusually strong, due in part to a complex web of commercial ties in the military, financial and energy sectors.
Borisov, a former firefighter and bodyguard, has promised to resign at the next sitting of parliament, probably on Monday or Tuesday. The prime minister congratulated Radev and admitted that his GERB party was now “in opposition to the will of the people.”
The most likely immediate course is for the current President Rosen Plevneliev to appoint cabinet ministers in a caretaker administration, before parliamentary elections early next year. In the meantime, the Socialists will need to try to work with a hotch-potch of parties on the far right, center and with the ethnic Turkish party, to exercise parliamentary influence.
“Bulgaria won. The people overcame apathy, and they overcame fear — that’s the most important thing,” Radev, 53-year-old former air force general, told reporters after his victory. “Despite bluffing by the government about the apocalypse, you voted for change.”
Radev, who gives daredevil airshows in a MiG-29 fighter jet, has given every sign during the election that he will seek to repair damaged ties with the Kremlin, saying that Bulgaria should never allow Russia to be styled as an enemy, and calling for an end to EU sanctions.
He has also taken a robust line on immigration, promising that he will prevent Bulgaria from becoming a “migrant ghetto.”
GERB had become an obvious target for public frustration over corruption. Although Borisov styled himself as a strongman willing to clean up Bulgaria, voters have largely been frustrated by GERB’s inability to reform the judiciary or escape the tentacles of oligarchs.
NATO officials are concerned about the presence of such an openly pro-Russian figure in the presidency and noted that cooperation with Bulgaria could be under strain.
Wasting no time in leaping to the defense of the Kremlin, Radev repeated his call for an end to sanctions immediately after his victory. He also expressed optimism that U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could chart a more positive geostrategic course.
“That gives us hope of reducing conflict in hotspots,” he said.
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