Election Campaigning Ceases in Macedonia

The pre-election silence ahead of Sunday's general and presidential elections began on Friday, overshadowed by opposition allegations of election fraud and threats that it may not recognise the result.

Campaigning is halting in Macedonia ahead of Sunday’s elections, when almost 1.8 million registered voters will choose 123 MPs as well as the next head of state.

In the presidential race, the incumbent President Gjorge Ivanov, running for a second five-year term for the ruling VMRO DPMNE party, enters with an edge over his opponent, the Social Democrat, SDSM, candidate, Stevo Pendarovski.

In the first round of voting on April 13, Ivanov won 449,000 votes, while Pendarovski came second with 326,000, which makes for a difference of over 120,000 votes in Ivanov’s favour.

More important is the parliamentary election, which will determine who will be the Prime Minister for the next four years, holding the most powerful post in the country.

Voters will choose between the ruling VMRO DPMNE party of Nikola Gruevski who has held power since 2006, and the opposition SDSM, led by Zoran Zaev.

For the purposes of the general elections, the country is divided into six electoral units, each contributing 20 legislators. Voters in the diaspora have had the right to vote since the 2011 election, and elect another three MPs, making 123 in all.

The parties propose lists of 20 candidates in each of the six electoral units. The more votes a party wins in each of the six units, the more candidates from that list enter parliament. The legislators’ term lasts for four years.

After losing the first round of the presidential vote, the Social Democrats accused the government of tampering with the election roll and of pressuring voters, allegations that the ruling party has denied.

The SDSM has also said it might not recognise the results of the April 27 presidential and general elections, which could plunge the country into political crisis.

After the first round of voting, the OSCE/ODIHR monitoring mission to Skopje said the polls were well administered but noted that “biased media coverage and the blurring of state and party activities failed to provide an even playing field”.

In its own report on the first part of the election, the Macedonian Helsinki Committee for Human Rights said that voting on April 13 proceeded in an atmosphere of calm but that voters were exposed to “pressure”, and that this was especially true for the country’s army of public employees.

“The entire election atmosphere and the intrusion into the secrecy and integrity of the voting point to lack of democratic capacity and to an inability to set free, fair and democratic elections,” the Helsinki Committee said.

Apart from allegations of fraud, another stain on the presidential race has been the insistence of the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, the junior ethnic Albanian party in government, that it will dispute the legitimacy of the next President, whoever it is.

The party had wanted the main Albanian and Macedonian parties in parliament to agree on a presidential candidate in advance.

The DUI has since urged ethnic Albanians who make up a quarter of the population to abstain from voting in the presidential race, although it has encouraged its supporters to take part in the parliamentary election.