Corruption Anger May Yield New Leadership as Bulgaria Votes
Voice of America
SOFIA, BULGARIA - Voters will go to the polls in Bulgaria for the second time in three months this weekend after no party secured enough support in an April parliamentary election to form a government.
Former three-time Prime Minister Boyko Borissov's GERB party performed best in the inconclusive election, but it received only 26% of the vote. Public discontent over widespread reduced the party's popularity from four years earlier, when it had 33% of the vote. The latest opinion polls indicate that support for GERB has dropped further since an interim government Bulgaria's president installed in May opened investigations into alleged corruption during Borissov's time as prime minister. Polls suggest a neck-to-neck race between Borissov's party and its main rival, the anti-elite There is Such a People, which is led by popular TV entertainer Slavi Trifonov.Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. Fire rages following an Israeli strike on an area designated for displaced Palestinians, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, in this still picture taken from a video, May 26, 2024. Palestinians gather at the site of an Israeli strike on a camp for internally displaced people in Rafah on May 27, 2024. A member of the bomb squad of the Israeli police collects debris after a rocket fired by Palestinian militants struck in the Israeli city of Herzliya on May 26, 2024.
Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili, right, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, left, leave a podium after marking Independence Day in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024. Demonstrators with Georgian national and EU flags rally during an opposition protest against a foreign influence bill as they mark their country's Independence Day, in the center of in Tbilisi, Georgia, May 26, 2024.