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Bulgarians vote in runoff presidential election

Incumbent President Rumen Radev aims at cleaning Bulgaria's image as the EU's most corrupt member state, won 49.5 percent of the votes in the first round last week.

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Bulgarians have voted for the third time this year hoping to bring a stable government.

Bulgarians are voting to elect their president, a largely ceremonial role that the current incumbent has transformed and put at the heart of the struggle against corruption in the European Union's poorest country.

Incumbent President Rumen Radev, the frontrunner with 49 percent in the first round of voting last weekend, faces off against Sofia University Rector Anastas Gerdjikov after neither could secure an outright majority.

While Radev, a former fighter pilot, is the country's most popular politician, Bulgaria itself is riven by fractious political parties that have failed to deliver a stable government needed to tackle deep-seated graft and the worsening coronavirus pandemic.

"Everything's going wrong. I want that to change for my children, grandchildren and former pupils," retired teacher Dobrinka Nakova said in the capital Sofia while out to vote on Sunday.

A clear win for Radev, 58, may usher in a period of political stability after last weekend's surprise victory in the third general election this year of a new anti-graftparty, We Continue the Change.

WCC now hopes to find coalition partners to end six months of political deadlock that have drawn out the worst political crisis since the end of communism three decades ago.

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The Turkish MRF party has been allied with GERB and has been snubbed by WCC in coalition talks.

Analysts also say that voter apathy might make the win more difficult for Radev, who was backed by the Socialists for his first five-year term but now runs as an independent.

Only 40 percent of those eligible turned out for the first round last Sunday, and lacking a party machine the former air force chief of staff depends on a broad spectrum of backers.

These include We Continue the Change, whose founders, Harvard graduates Kiril Petkov and Assen Vassilev, served as ministers in the first interim administration Radev appointed in May after the inconclusive April poll.

SOURCE: TRTWorld and agencies