EU vote a litmus test for Bulgarian general election

(SOFIA) - Bulgaria's effort to elect 17 deputies to the European parliament this week will be a rehearsal for a general election in July.

"The European election is the first half of a game," said Sofia mayor Boyko Borisov, whose Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria party (GERB) leads in polls ahead of Sunday's vote.

While not all politicians agree, polling institutes say the share of votes between the the different political parties in the EU election is likely to mirror the national election.

According to the latest MBMD poll, GERB will win Sunday's EU election, with 30.6 percent of the vote. That will give it five or six seats in the 736 member EU parliament.

The Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP) of outgoing premier Sergey Stanishev will come second with 25.4 percent and four or five seats, followed by the Turkish minority Movement for Rights and Freedoms party (MRF) with 19.4 percent and three or four seats, according to MBMD.

The ultra-nationalist Ataka party of firebrand Volen Siderov will garner 8.1 percent of the vote and one or two seats, followed by the Blue Coalition of two small right-wing parties, UDF and DSB, likely to win 6.7 percent of the vote and a single seat.

Some 35 percent of the eligible 6.7 million voters are expected to turn out, MBMD said, higher than the EU average.

MBMD director Mira Radeva predicted that the parties that did not manage to squeeze into the European parliament are likely to see their support fall in the general election.

Kolyo Kolev, an analyst with the Mediana agency, predicted that the winners of the EU vote would probably see their share of the vote in the general election increase by 5.0-6.0 percent.

The head of the NCIOM institute, Lidya Yordanova, said that in the EU campaign, none of the parties explained how the European parliament actually works. Instead, they focused on economic and social problems worry voters in the national vote.

All of Bulgaria's EU candidates have pledged to clean up Bulgaria's corruption-tarnished image.

Fraud concerns prompted the European Commission last year to freeze more than 800 million euros (1.1 billion dollars) in EU subsidies to Bulgaria, of which some 220 million euros have been permanently cut.

Corruption and vote-buying allegations marred the last local elections in Bulgaria. And this time, parties are obliged to include on all their election materials a caption that states that selling and buying votes is punishable with fines and even prison sentences.

National radio and television urged people to vote "only according to their conscience."

A recent Transparency International survey showed that 10 percent of all Bulgarians were prepared to sell their vote.

Some critics have suggested that people are standing as candidates for the EU elections in order gain immunity from prosecution for crimes they are accused of.

The former CSKA Sofia football club president, Alexander Tomov, under investigation for allegedly siphoning off the club's money, is running as a candidate for the EU parliament.

A recent Gallup poll showed that Bulgarians' trust in the European parliament is seven times higher than in their own parliament.