Be it the airport of Bulgaria’s capital Sofia or the roads connecting cities across the country, the face of the former Bulgarian President is everywhere at the moment.
Billboards and banners of Rumen Radev and his newly founded Progressive Bulgaria party dominate the visual landscape throughout the country.
While other parties traditionally include a large number of members in their campaign materials, Progressive Bulgaria’s message revolves entirely around its leader.
A former military pilot, an admirer of Hungary’s outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban and an opponent of Bulgaria’s adoption of the euro, Radev was elected president twice, in 2016 and 2021.
While president, he frequently criticized the parties in successful coalition governments and enjoyed strong approval ratings.
snap election
Following massive nationwide protests over the country’s budget law, the Bulgarian government fell last December, leading to parliamentary elections on April 19, the country’s eighth in five years.
It is a high-stakes election, with the fight against corruption and inflation at the center of the campaign.
So far, the race has been dominated by former President Rumen Radev’s decision to step down before the end of his term in January and run for parliament.
He declared at the beginning of his campaign, “Our goal is clear: bring down the oligarchy. Let’s take back our country, so that there will be no poor people in European Bulgaria.”
Radev’s lead in the polls, his pledge to “overturn the corrupt model” of established parties, his pro-Russian stance during his presidency, and his lack of clear political partners raise questions about whether a Radev victory would lead to significant changes in the country’s domestic and foreign policy and what implications it would have for the EU.
Largely positive view about Radev
DW spoke to voters about the candidates as they traveled around the country for Sunday’s election. Amid the political instability of the past five years, opinions on Radev were largely positive, with many dubbing him “the country’s last hope”.
However, others, including young voters, remain skeptical about what he calls “the new messiah figure on the political horizon.”
Boryana Dimitrova, managing partner of Alfa Research Markets and Social Research Agency, says Radev’s campaign is filling large city halls and presenting the former president as a unifying figure who cuts across different social groups – a dynamic that is forcing other parties to focus solely on strengthening their core voters.
“The arrival of a new player on the political scene has turned voters away from most parties, with other parties focused on maintaining at least what is certain,” he told DW.
The latest opinion poll by Alfa Research shows Radev’s Progressive Bulgaria is on track to win 34.2% of the vote, ahead of the centre-right coalition GERB-SDS, which has fallen to 19.5%. The DPS, the party led by oligarch Dalian Peevski, which is under sanctions from both the US and Britain, is in a tough race with the liberal anti-corruption coalition PP-DB, with the parties receiving 9.4% and 11.6% of the vote respectively.
Priorities for Bulgarian voters
In a fragmented political landscape with no clear majority in sight, parties are focusing on what they see as their past successes, such as Bulgaria’s full integration into the European Union (GERB) and judicial reform and the fight against corruption (PP-DB).
However, these are in stark contrast to the day-to-day concerns of Bulgarian citizens.
Data from a survey conducted by Alpha Research for the Bulgarian National Radio shows that Bulgarians fear rising inflation more than anything else. The country adopted the euro on January 1 and energy prices are rising due to the war in the Middle East.
“Fear of inflation has not appeared in surveys since the hyperinflation crisis of 1997 – not even during the consequences of the financial crisis in 2008,” Dimitrova told DW. He said the fight against corruption is the second most important issue for voters.
Radev has made this latter issue a cornerstone of his campaign.
Radev’s deliberate campaign of ambiguity
“Radeev’s voters are almost evenly divided,” says Daniel Smilov, a political scientist and associate professor at Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski. “On one side are those who are pro-Russian; on the other side are those who are concerned about corruption.”
For this reason, Radev is avoiding being too obvious in his message. Otherwise, Smilov told DW, “he risks angering one of the two opposite groups” and losing their support as a result.
According to Dimitrova, most of Radev’s supporters have a clearly pro-Russian preference and come from the far-right and many conservative and leftist parties that are losing ground.
For example, Radev is supported by many who previously voted for the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the successor to the Communist Party that ruled the country for 45 years and the party that supported his first presidential bid in 2016. Today, the BSP runs the risk of not crossing the threshold of entering Parliament.
Pro-Russian stance
Radev has always been open about his pro-Russian stance. However, Putin’s refusal to call the aggressor in the war in Ukraine while he was Bulgarian president caused a major backlash.
Although Radev has never advocated Bulgaria leaving the EU, his positions have often aligned with those of Viktor Orbán in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia. Radev has opposed support for Ukraine and has said that he considers sanctions against Russia ineffective.
With Viktor Orban’s defeat in Hungary’s election on April 12, Politico recently named Radev a wild card in its ranking of politicians who could potentially become the EU’s next disruptor-in-chief – should he become prime minister.
Possibility of tough coalition talks
“It’s not clear whether Progressive Bulgaria and Radev mean ‘progressive’ in the American, leftist sense or in the sense used by Serbia’s leader Aleksandar Vucic,” Smilov said, referring to the conservative Serbian Progressive Party.
The answer to that question will likely lie in the partnerships that progressive Bulgaria is willing to build at the national level.
So far, party members have said they are willing to form a coalition around shared policies, such as “zero tolerance for corruption”, opening the door to a possible partnership with the pro-European PP-DB.
Yet the two parties’ differences on foreign policy could prove a significant obstacle to forming a stable government, especially as both have ruled out any coalition involving GERB and the DPS.
Other parties are also refusing to confirm whether they will join a coalition with Radev.
According to Smilov, this and the potential lack of a clear majority after the election, raise two key questions in the final days of the campaign: “Will Bulgaria have a majority that is not pro-European for the first time in more than two decades and will the corruption model in the country finally be destroyed.”
Edited by: Angiel Flanagan