Macedonian Opposition Unhappy Over Electoral Code

The parliament is speeding up adoption of election bills | Photo by Balkan Insight

The ruling VMRO DPMNE adopted the electoral code on Friday without the presence of the opposition, which is boycotting parliament.

While the Social Democrats last week dropped their demands related to the election, they had pushed hard for political party representatives to replace workers from the state administration in local electoral committees. The election workers are responsible for running the polling stations, monitoring the voting process, and counting the votes.

The opposition argued that this would have prevented possible misuse of the state workers by the ruling party and election fraud.

“Everybody knows that the one precondition for a job in the state administration is a ruling party membership card,” said Jani Makraduli, a legislator from the Social Democrats, after the parliament adopted the changes.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski of the VMRO DPMNE previously agreed to include political representatives in the electoral committees, but conditioned this with the return of the opposition to parliament.

The ruling parties insist that the new electoral code is an overall improvement that will particularly boost the control of the political parties’ spending during the election campaign. The provisions oblige the parties to submit reports on their spending before and after the campaign.

Last week the opposition said it is withdrawing all of its demands related to the election process and changes to the electoral code but refused to return to the parliament and end its boycott. Hours after the opposition gave up its demands Gruevski announced that elections would be held on June 5.

In order for the June election date to be respected the parliament must be dissolved within the next two weeks.

But first they must carry out the election of the new head of the state electoral commission, a vote slated for Wednesday, and change the boundaries in one of the six election districts.

Macedonia’s political gridlock started in late January when the Social Democrats and the other smaller opposition parties started a parliament boycott, accusing the government of curbing democratic freedoms and causing further economic downfall.

Although both the opposition and the government said they wanted early elections, they failed to agree on an election date during their talks in February and March.

Local Vreme daily has calculated that during the opposition boycott the ruling party and its partners have so far adopted some 180 laws. On Saturday alone the parliament adopted 102 bills.