Right wins in Bulgaria, slams Turkish ’prying’

Hurriyet Daily News with wires

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An almost complete ballot count credited GERB with 39.7 percent support, giving it as many as 116 seats in the 240-seat parliament. The outgoing Socialists could manage only 40 seats, having won 17.72 percent of the vote.

Borisov’s remarks were followed by another politician, Yane Yanev, leader of the Order, Law and Justice Party, or OLJ, who blamed Turkey for "election tourism" and the intervention of Turkish secret services for his party's showing, which acquired 5 percent of the votes.

The OLJ is set to hold a news conference Wednesday on how Turkey and what it called Turkish "special forces" interfered in Bulgaria, Bulgarian Sofia Echo newspaper reported, citing Yanev.

The outgoing Socialists’ junior coalition partner in the Cabinet, the Turkish minority Rights and Freedoms Party, or MRF, won 14.5 percent of the vote, ranking third.

"We have to form a government as soon as possible," Borisov told bTV television late Sunday after the vote, according to an account by Agence France-Presse. He would seek one or more allies from a range of smaller center-right parties, he added. Borisov could form a coalition government with one of two small right-wing formations that also entered parliament. They are the Blue Coalition with 15 seats and the OLJ with 10 seats. The ultra nationalist ATAKAparty, which grabbed 21 seats, also vowed to support the new GERB-led government.

Outgoing Socialist Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev, whose coalition survived a series of censure motions from the opposition in parliament, conceded the Socialists had suffered a "serious loss" at the polls, according to an account by The Associated Press.

Meanwhile, Ahmet Doğan, the leader of the Turkish minority MRF party, noted that the MRF has witnessed a 20 percent rise in support compared with the previous parliamentary elections, adding that the party also widened its political geography by garnering support from different geographic regions. The MRF increased its support with the backing of a total 610,808 voters, and 83,686 voters who cast their ballots in Turkey.

Doğan also expressed pessimism over the future of the new Cabinet. "I am pessimistic about the new government, but I hope they can handle it," Doğan News Agency quoted Doğan as saying.