Macedonia to Improve Electoral Legislation

Novakovski on Tuesday met with Jose Luis Herrero, the ambassador of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, in Macedonia.

"We think that the state must put in practice some new laws that do not apply only to elections. The law for preventing intimidation of the administration is one of them as this was mentioned in the report of the OSCE / ODIHR,” Novakovski told press on Thursday.

Herrero noted that there has been “great progress made” in improving the Electoral Code, updating the list of voters and educating the election administration since the last elections in 2009.

After the local and presidential polls in March 2009, the OSCE said the election met “most international standards”, but noted widespread pressure on voters, particularly on employees in the state administration.

The observers also remarked that the electoral roll was too long, suspecting that deceased people or people not currently living in the country were included, thus presenting an opportunity for manipulation.

Novakovski claimed that his meeting with Herrero was not a sign that snap polls are brewing.

He said that all the ongoing work to improve electoral legislation and to update the electoral roll “does not give us the right to think that there will be early elections soon”.

However, he noted that this is in the domain of the political players and not in the State Election Commission’s hands.

Media have speculated recently that the country might hold early general elections this autumn initiated by the ruling centre-right VMRO DPMNE party in order to capitalize on its high popularity rates. Apparently using the same logic VMRO DPMNE initiated and won the 2008 snap general polls after two years in power.