SOFIA (AFP) – Bulgaria’s center-right opposition is poised to defeat the ruling Socialists in a general election Sunday, but will find it difficult to form a stable enough coalition to govern, experts say.

According to last-minute opinion polls, Sofia Mayor Boyko Borisov and his upstart GERB party will win 28-32 percent of votes, way ahead of Prime Minister Sergey Stanishev and his ex-communist Socialist Party with 17-22 percent.

Thus, with no outright majority in the highly fragmented 240-seat parliament, Borisov will be forced to team up with at least two other small right-wing formations in order to govern and any coalition talks are likely to prove arduous, analysts said.

Borisov, a 50-year-old former bodyguard and police lieutenant general, has already ruled out a broad right-left coalition with the Socialists.

And the Socialists may find it even more difficult to broker a power-sharing deal of their own after four scandal-ridden years in coalition with the liberal NMSP party of former exiled King Simeon Saxe-Coburg and the Turkish minority MRF party.

With coalition talks therefore likely to take up the entire summer – and possibly even necessitate new elections in the autumn – analysts are concerned about a political impasse just when the economic crisis is expected to reach its peak in Bulgaria.

“There are a number of post-election scenarios. The worst would be anarchy amid crisis,” Stanishev told the 24 Hours newspaper in a recent interview.

“The most important thing at the moment is to get through the next 12 months with no major damage,” he said.

GERB’s team of economists agreed. But in a recent interview with AFP, Borisov insisted that forming a government was not an end in itself. And he expressed skepticism about any sort of coalition.

Both GERB and the Socialists see cleaning up Bulgaria’s image as the EU’s poorest and most corruption-ridden member as their top priority. Stanishev oversaw the Balkan state’s difficult accession to the 27-nation bloc in 2007.

But his government has taken the blame for Brussels’s decision to freeze hundreds of millions of euros in financial aid over concerns of massive fraud and misappropriation of EU money.

Corruption and vote-buying allegations have similarly marred the election campaign so far, despite an extensive public information campaign and the introduction of heavy fines and even jail terms for people found guilty of accepting or offering bribes for votes.

Nonetheless, according to a recent poll by the state institute NCIOM, 12 percent of Bulgarians said that poverty would force them to accept money for their vote at the ballot box.

Another new phenomenon this time around, which is also unlikely to enhance Bulgaria’s image at home or abroad, is the number of suspected criminals, some already on trial, who are standing for parliament.

Taking advantage of the country’s immunity laws, which automatically suspend any court proceedings from the moment people register as political candidates to the end of their term in office, if elected, a number of businessmen with dubious reputations are running for parliament.

One such example are the so-called Galev brothers, Plamen Galev and Angel Hristov. Both are under investigation for racketeering, but were released from custody as soon as they registered as candidates.