Macedonia Readies For Sunday Poll

After a day of pre election silence on Saturday, voters will hit the polling stations on Sunday morning to decide whether Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of the centre-right VMRO DPMNE party stays in office.

Over the past 20 days, parties, coalitions and independent candidates have presented their platforms and candidates, focusing primarily on promises to improve the economy and the wellbeing of Macedonians.

At the final rallies on Friday night, the parties repeated their campaign promises, and vowed to emerge triumphant on Sunday.

The main opposition Social Democrats held their final gathering in the north-eastern town of Kumanovo.

“We will win on Sunday. There will be changes,” the Social Democrats' leader Branko Crvenkovski told supporters.

“The goal of the Social Democrats is to defeat you in these elections,” Crvenkovski said, addressing Gruevski directly.

During the campaign, the opposition slammed PM Gruevski for what they called his party's authoritarian rule and corruption, for ruining the economy and for keeping Macedonia away from EU and NATO membership.

The ruling party, meanwhile, held its final rally on Friday in the Skopje municipality of “Aerodrom”.

PM Gruevski, who has been in power since 2006, is himself convinced of his party's impending election victory. He has promised robust reforms in all key sectors as well as an uncompromising fight against crime, poverty and unemployment.

The ruling party says it has a strong platform for progress oriented towards EU values.

“I commit myself to fulfilling those promises and carrying out the more than 1,200 projects contained in our platform for reforms and development,” Gruevski told supporters at his party's final rally.

Gruevski also faces serious opposition within the traditional right wing bloc that his party has traditionally dominated.

Dissatisfied former VMRO DPMNE members have turned to other right-of-centre parties, accusing the prime minister of forgetting his rightist ideals. These groups threaten to snatch a considerable chunk of the traditional electorate of the ruling VMRO DPMNE.

Many observers have noted that this election campaign has been particularly dirty and negative, with harsh accusations exchanged between the two main parties on a daily basis.

The ruling party has slammed opposition leader Crvenkovski as “a criminal” and “outdated politician”, and said he was responsible for the "criminal transition" during the 1990s.

The opposition, meanwhile, has called Gruevski a“liar”, and accused him and his close circle of corruption.

Ethnic Albanians in Macedonia, the country’s largest minority, will also head to the polls on Sunday, mainly to cast their ballot for one of several ethnic Albanian parties.
 
The election campaign in this bloc mainly focused on promises for improvement of the collective rights of the ethnic Albanian community, which makes up one quarter of the population.

The Democratic Union for Integration, currently part of the ruling coalition, is considered to be an almost sure winner in this bloc, while three opposition parties are fighting for second place.

According to an unwritten rule guiding Macedonian politics, the winner in the Albanian bloc is invited to join the ruling party from the ethnic Macedonian bloc to form the government.
 
Sunday's vote begins at 7 a.m. and will last until 7 p.m. A total of 1,821,122 people are eligible to vote at 2,976 polling stations nationwide.
 
The country is divided in six election units, with each contributing 20 legislators to the 123 seat assembly. Macedonians living abroad will elect the remaining three MPs.

The State Electoral Commission has said all preparations have been completed, with the voting material already distributed to bodies charged with carrying out the elections.