July 5 (SeeNews) - Bulgarian right-of-centre opposition GERB party won parliamentary elections on Sunday by a margin of more than 2-to-1 ahead of its main opponent, the ruling Socialists, in a vote marked by high turnout, preliminary official results indicated.
GERB, founded in 2006 and led by Sofia mayor Boiko Borisov, won 43.84% of the vote, while the Socialists, who are the biggest party in the current tripartite government coalition, got 18.38%, according to partial results based on 31.6% of the ballots counted and released by the Central Electoral Commission. Throughout the election campaign GERB have kept a lead of around nine percentage points ahead of the Socialist Party, which was projected to win between 17 and 20 percent of the vote.
Borisov, a former senior Interior Ministry official and a former bodyguard to late Communist dictator Todor Zhivkov, is pledging to clamp down on Bulgaria's perceived endemic corruption, crack down on organized crime and boost Bulgaria's recession-hit economy with financing from the IMF.
Bulgaria's economy expectedly slipped into recession as gross domestic product shrank by a real 3.5% on the year in the first quarter of 2009. The country's unemployment rate rose to 7.08% in May from 6.19% a year earlier and 7.04% in April 2009. Bulgaria has seen its budget revenue falling since the beginning of the year, as in the meantime the government raised spending in the runup to the elections and foreign analysts projected that the country is the next in line to seek international bailout similar to ones granted to Serbia, Romania, Hungary, Ukraine and Latvia.
“With these results, […] our responsibility is to form a right-of-centre government as soon as possible,” GERB chairman Tsvetan Tsvetanov said.
Borisov told reporters he is ready to become prime minister; failure to do so would mean shunning responsibility for the country which has sunk into recession as a result of the global economic downturn. He added that the only parties GERB will not invite for talks for the forming of a new government are the Socialists and mainly ethnic Turk DPS party, a junior partner in the current government coalition.
GERB will seek responsibility for the wrongdoing and controversial deals of the Socialist-led government and will trim public administration to cut costs, Borisov told a news conference. He has vowed to improve the quality of life for Bulgarians and crack down on persistent corruption that led the European Union to freeze over one billion euro in development financing for its poorest member state last year.
The Bulgarian Socialist Party, BSP, say they have delivered on the pledges they gave four years ago: to sustain growth, maintain economic and financial stability, and attract fresh foreign investment. However, support for them has been eroded by their perceived failure to improve Bulgaria's judicial system and crack down on corruption and organized crime, which has cost the country the suspension of around one billion euro in EU aid.
“This is a very serious defeat for BSP [...],” Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told a separate news conference.
BSP will support the financial, economic and social stability of the country, he added.
Stanishev also rejected Borisov’s statement that his government is leaving the country’s public finances in bad shape.
Data on the January-May budget performance released three days before the Sunday vote indicated the consolidated budget surplus has plunged 83% year-on-year to 555.4 million levs ($400.1 million/284 million euro). Stanishev's government has said it aims for a budget surplus equivalent to 3.0% of the projected gross domestic product this year under an optimistic scenario and for a 1.6% surplus under a worst-case scenario.
Preliminary voter turnout was 60.2% by 7 p.m. local time (1600 GMT) when polling stations closed.
“Voter turnout was very high, higher than the more optimistic forecasts. This led to a categorical and convincing victory of GERB,” local polster Gallup International's analyst Andrei Raichev told privately held bTV broadcaster.
A further four Bulgarian parties and coalitions are set to representatives to the 240-strong chamber after Bulgaria's first general election since the country joined the European Union in 2007 and the seventh since the collapse of Communism in 1989.
DPS won 10.16% of the vote. The party has received stable support in each parliamentary vote held in Bulgaria since 1990.
Strongly nationalistic Ataka party ranked fourth, having won 8.84% of the vote. Ataka says that Bulgaria should leave NATO and block Turkey's entry into the EU.
Conservative Blue Coalition, comprising the Union of Democratic Forces, SDS, and Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, DSB, led by ex-premier Ivan Kostov, won 6.88%.
The Order, Lawfulness and Justice (RZS) party won 4.13%. RZS, set up in 2005, gained popularity fast, mainly by publicly exposing cases of suspected high-level corruption.
The Lider party and the third partner in the current government coalition, centrist National Movement for Stability and Prosperity, NDSV, led by ex-king Simeon Saxe-Coburg Gotha, did not cross the four-percent barrier and will not enter parliament. Each of them won a little over 3.0%, according to preliminary results.
The Central Electoral Commission will announce the names of elected MPs on July 12.