Bulgaria's center-right GERB party, the winner of the country's October 2 snap election, will initiate negotiations with other parties to try to form a government, GERB leader Boyko Borisov, the former long-serving prime minister, said on October 4.
Borisov said he was ready to give up the prime minister position if that was what was needed to agree to a functioning coalition, and added that a new early election -- following four already in the last two years -- would not produce different results.
GERB won the election with 25.3 percent of the votes, but faces a challenge to forge a ruling coalition in a hung parliament.
The early election came after a fragile coalition led by Kiril Petkov of the reformist anti-corruption We Continue the Change party lost a no-confidence vote in June. We Continue the Change came in second, with 20.2 percent.
The southeastern EU member country of nearly 7 million people has been plagued by political gridlock since 2020 when it was rocked by nationwide protests, as public anger over years of corruption boiled over. Much of the ire was directed at Borisov and his GERB party.
