RUSSE, Bulgaria — Some 2,000 people gave a hero's welcome on Wednesday to Bulgaria's long-exiled King Simeon II, whose decision to enter politics has radically changed the race for a parliamentary election June 17.
"Simeon, Simeon," chanted the crowd in the center of the town of Russe, some 200 miles northwest of the capital, Sofia.
"We all believe in him, with him there will be calm and order," said one of the supporters. "We are looking for a person who would unite everyone."
Another added: "Both rich and poor trust him." A teenage boy, tears in his eyes, said: "I want to give flowers to him."
Simeon, flanked by his wife Margarita, was showered with flowers during a short walk to the city council building, where he went into a meeting with city officials.
The king, who has lived in Spain since 1946, announced on Wednesday he would lead a new political group, the National Movement for Simeon II, to contest the June election.
He has not put forward a concrete program, apart from a promise to fight corruption and a pledge to improve the lives of ordinary people within 800 days.
His movement has yet to be registered, but partial opinion polls, published by several pollsters this week, showed that up to 50 percent of voters were ready to back him.
It is much higher than the ratings of the two main parties, the ruling reformist Union of Democratic Forces, led by Prime Minister Ivan Kostov, and the opposition Socialists Party of ex-communists. Both have about 20 percent support.
Kostov's government is the first to serve a full four-year term since one-party rule ended in 1989, but the UDF has lost much of its support because of the painful reforms accompanied by declining living standards and a series of scandals involving top officials.
The Socialists have not recovered from a crushing election defeat in 1997.
This has apparently created fertile ground for a third force and Simeon became the first monarch in post-communist eastern Europe to enter politics in his motherland.
"In the last few years, Bulgarian politicians themselves opened the space into which the Tsar entered comfortably," said the respected Kapital business weekly.
"They have simply forgotten that their actions have to be aimed at resolving real problems of the people and by that they have opened gates widely for the arrival of a new political force."
Now a Madrid-based businessman, Simeon shared the fate of other monarchs in Eastern Europe. He was banished from Bulgaria with his family at the age of nine, after a rigged referendum abolished the monarchy.