Polls Close in Macedonia's General Election

Election monitors have reported only minor irregularities | Photo by: Sinisa Jakov Marusic

The snap election, called after months of political stalemate caused by an opposition decision to boycott parliament at the start of this year, will determine the fate of the government of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski after five years in power.

The president of the State Election Commission, Boris Kondarko, said 53.86 per cent of the electorate [928,983 people] had voted by 17h.

The final turnout is expected to be higher than in the 2008 elections, when a total of 57 per cent of Macedonia's 1.8 million eligible voters cast ballots.

Sunday's poll will determine whether the incumbent government of PM Gruevski and his centre-right VMRO DPMNE party stay in power, or if the country will turn to the main opposition Social Democratic Party, led by the former Macedonian president Branko Crvenkovski.

“Our party had a considerable advantage in all the opinion polls before the elections. I think that this will continue to be the case and the reforms in Macedonia will triumph,” Gruevski told media on Sunday.

"I hope we will have a calm election day without incidents, violence or any kind of irregularities," Crvenkovski told reporters after he cast his ballot in Skopje. He added that he expected his party to win the elections, which would mean "changes and a new perspective for all the citizens of Macedonia"

Sunday's elections were also marked by a great divide in the right wing bloc. Several conservative parties battled for the same group of voters, and were expected to snatch votes from the VMRO DMPNE's traditional electorate.

While most opinion polls carried out before election day gave a considerable lead to Gruevski’s VMRO-DPMNE, the opposition Social Democrats are hoping that they can win enough votes to form a government in coalition with several smaller parties, including from the ethnic Albanian bloc.

Oppinion polls gave advantage to the ruling VMRO DPMNE party | Photo by: Sinisa Jakov Marusic

Amid fears of possible election violence and fraud, Macedonian police dispatched some 7,000 police officers to polling stations across the country. In addition, the voting was monitered for irregularities by over 7,000 local and foreign election observers.

“The voting is mainly calm and orderly. Citizens have been able to vote freely and the secrecy of their ballots has been respected,” said Election Commission head Boris Kondarko an hour before the polls closed.

"Despite all the pressure, today's high turnout prevented the scenarios of the ruling party for election manipulations and fraud,” Gordan Georgiev from the Social Democrats told a press conference after the voting ended.

Local NGOs that monitored the election process reported only minor irregularities during the day, from family voting to influencing and attempting to bribe and influence voters, and photographing completed ballots in several polling stations.

Most observers described this year's election campaign as one of the roughest and most negative in the country’s 20 years of independence. The tension situation in the period leading up to poll increased fears of political friction and even violence in some areas.

Alongside ethnic Macedonians, the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Albanians, also voted for their preferred politicians on Sunday.

The junior ruling party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, is considered an almost sure winner in this bloc, while three other ethnic Albanian opposition parties are fighting for second place.

It is an unwritten rule in Macedonia that the winner in the Albanian bloc is invited to join the new government. Ethnic Albanians make up a quarter of the country’s population.

The preliminary and unofficial results from the polls are expected late tonight.