Lead by Kiril Petkov, a 41-year-old pro-European businessman, this centrist party created only a few months ago won 26% of the votes, ahead of the Conservative Party. It will have to form a coalition to govern.
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A confirmation and a surprise. If the outgoing Bulgarian President Radev has widely won, as expected, the first round of the presidential election organized on Sunday, November 14 in this country of the Balkans, the centrist candidate anti-corruption Kiril Petkov has, he made an unexpected performance arriving at the head. legislatures organized on the same day.
According to the counts of the survey institutes, this 41-year-old businessman and a graduate of Harvard is in a good position to become prime minister, the most important position of the Bulgarian political system. His centrist party, “we continue the change,” got about 26% of the vote and arrives in front of the Conservative Party Gerb, from Booko Borissov, credited about 23%. The latter, who was prime minister until April, suffered innumerable scandals of corruption that marked his ten years of successive mandates.
In the opposite, Petkov claimed the victory from Sunday night by promising “to stop corruption and make the Bulgarian judicial system work”. “There is a majority. Bulgaria is going to be governed by a regular firm,” he promised, while the country has been in the acting government since April after two legislative polls – in April and July – who have Open to any stable majority. Organized Sunday, the third ballot in one year was marked by historically low participation.
A program catches all
m. Petkov was Minister of the Economy of the Interim Government until September. In this position, he participated in recent months at the large unpacking corruption company organized by the interim power. With its popularity and ideal son-in-law look, and then launched in the countryside by creating its training with the Minister of Finance Assen Vassilev, a former Harvard comrade.
The two men are entrepreneurs. Raised in Canada, Petkov specializes in real estate and probiotics, Mr. VasiLelev at air flight booking websites. “This is the first time in Bulgarian politics that we have a party with businessmen formed in the west and then returned to the country, explains the political officer Ivan Krastev. They are probusiness, but with a social sensitivity. program is actually quite vague to catch any type of voter. “
Beyond the fight against corruption, the duo defends a mooring “in the European Union and in NATO”, which is important in a country where the camp Prorusse remains influential, but they remain very fuzzy on topics that divide Bulgarian society as LGBT rights. To take power, Mr. Petkov will probably have to form a coalition with three parties with very different profiles.
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