Whether it be at the airport in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, or along the roads connecting cities nationwide, the face of Bulgaria's former president is everywhere right now.

Billboards and banners for Rumen Radev and his newly founded Progressive Bulgaria party dominate the visual landscape across the country.

While other parties traditionally feature a larger cast of members in their campaign material, Progressive Bulgaria's messaging revolves entirely around its leader.

A former military pilot, an admirer of Hungary's outgoing Prime Minister Viktor Orban and an opponent of Bulgaria's adoption of the euro, Radev was elected president twice, in 2016 and 2021.

While president, he frequently criticized the parties in successive coalition governments and enjoyed strong approval ratings.

Snap election

Following mass nationwide protests over the country's budget law, the Bulgarian government collapsed last December, triggering a parliamentary election on April 19, the country's eighth in five years.

This is a high-stakes election, with the fight against corruption and inflation at the heart of the campaign.

So far, the race has been dominated by former President Rumen Radev's decision in January to step down before the end of his term and run for parliament.

"Our goal is clear: to bring down the oligarchy. Let's take back our country, so there will be no poor people in European Bulgaria," he declared at the start of his campaign.

With Radev leading in the polls, his pledge to "overturn the corrupt model" of the established parties, his pro-Russian stances during his presidency and the lack of clear political partners raise questions as to whether a Radev victory would change the country's domestic and foreign policy significantly and what the implications for the EU would be.

Largely positive view of Radev

Traveling across the country in the runup to Sunday's election, DW spoke with voters about the candidates. Views on Radev were largely positive, with many labeling him "the country's last hope" amid the political instability of the last five years.

Others, however, including young voters, remain skeptical of what they describe as "the new messianic figure on the political horizon."

Boriana Dimitrova, the managing partner of the Alpha Research market and social research agency, notes that Radev's campaign is filling large city halls and presenting the former president as a unifying figure that cuts across different social groups — a dynamic that is forcing other parties to focus solely on consolidating their core voters.

"With a new player on the political scene drawing voters away from most of the parties, the others have focused on preserving at least what is certain," she told DW.

The latest opinion poll by Alpha Research shows Radev's Progressive Bulgaria on track to win 34.2% of the vote, ahead of the center-right alliance GERB-SDS, which has slipped to 19.5%. DPS, the party led by oligarch Delyan Peevski, who is under both US and UK sanctions, is running neck and neck with the anti-corruption liberal alliance PP-DB, with the parties polling at 9.4% and 11.6% respectively.

Priorities for Bulgarian voters

In a fragmented political landscape with no clear majority in sight, the parties are focusing on what they see as their past successes, such as the full integration of Bulgaria into the EU (GERB) and judicial reform and the fight against corruption (PP-DB).

These are, however, in stark contrast to the day-to-day concerns of Bulgarian citizens.

Data from a poll conducted by Alpha Research for Bulgarian National Radio shows that Bulgarians fear rising inflation more than anything else. The country adopted the euro on January 1, and energy prices have been rising because of the war in the Middle East.

"The fear of inflation has not appeared in polls since the hyperinflation crisis of 1997 — not even during the consequences of the financial crisis in 2008," Dimitrova told DW, adding that the fight against corruption ranks as the second most pressing issue for voters.

Radev has made this latter issue the cornerstone of his campaign.

Radev's intentional campaign ambiguity

"Radev's electorate is split almost evenly," says Daniel Smilov, a political scientist and associate professor at Sofia University St Kliment Ohridski. "On one side are those who are pro-Russian; on the other are those who are concerned about corruption."

For this reason, Radev is avoiding being too explicit in his messaging. Otherwise, Smilov told DW, "he risks antagonizing one of the two opposite groups" and losing their support as a result.

According to Dimitrova, most of Radev's supporters have a clear pro-Russian preference and are drawn from both the far-right and several conservative and left-wing parties that are losing ground.

For example, Radev has the support of many people who previously voted for the Bulgarian Socialist Party (BSP), the successor to the communist party that ruled the country for 45 years and the party that backed his first presidential bid in 2016. Today, the BSP risks not making it over the threshold to enter parliament.

Pro-Russian stance

Radev has always been open about his pro-Russian stances. However his refusal to call Putin an aggressor in the war in Ukraine while he was Bulgarian president sparked a major backlash.

Although Radev has never advocated for Bulgaria to leave the EU, his positions have often aligned with those of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Robert Fico in Slovakia. Radev has opposed support for Ukraine and said he considered sanctions against Russia to be ineffective.

With Viktor Orban's loss in the Hungarian election on April 12, Politico recently named Radev the wild card in its ranking of politicians likely to become the EU's next disruptor-in-chief — should he become prime minister.

Tough coalition negotiations likely

"It is unclear whether Progressive Bulgaria and Radev mean 'progressive' in the American, left-wing sense, or in the sense used by Serbia's leader Alexander Vucic," Smilov said, alluding to the conservative Serbian Progressive Party.

The answer to that question will probably lie in the partnerships that Progressive Bulgaria is willing to form at national level.

So far, party members have said they are open to forming alliances around shared policies, such as "zero tolerance of corruption," opening the door to a potential partnership with the pro-European PP-DB.

Yet the two parties' divergence on foreign policy could prove a significant obstacle to forming a stable government, especially as both have ruled out any coalition involving GERB and DPS.

Other parties are also refusing to confirm whether they would enter a coalition with Radev.

According to Smilov, this and the likely lack of a clear majority after the election, raise two key questions in the final days of the campaign: "Whether Bulgaria will have, for the first time in more than two decades, a majority that is not pro-European and whether the corruption model in the country will finally be dismantled."

Edited by: Aingeal Flanagan