Polls Open in Macedonia's General Election

On Sunday, 2,976 polling stations across the country open at 7am and close at 7 pm for the country’s seventh general election since independence.

Some 1,821,122 million people out of 2.2 million Macedonians are eligible to vote.

For the purposes of the general election, the country is divided into six electoral units, each sending 20 legislators to the 123-seat parliament. Macedonians living abroad, who have the right to vote abroad for the first time this year, will elect the remaining three seats.

The early polls come after months of political stalemate caused by an opposition decision to quit parliament at the start of this year.

The main battle will be waged between Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski centre-right VMRO-DPMNE party and the biggest opposition party, the Social Democrats, led by Branko Crvenkovski.

While the ruling party pledges to continue reforms to strengthen country’s economy and prepare the county for EU and NATO membership, the opposition accuses Gruevski of authoritarianism, corruption and of deliberately stalling Macedonia's Euro-Atlantic integration process.

Most opinion polls conducted prior to election day have given the advantage to VMRO-DPMNE but the Social Democrats still hope to triumph by winning over the many undecided voters at the last minute.
 
Amid fears of possible violence and election fraud, almost 7,000 police officers will secure the polling stations. Over 7,000 foreign and local election monitors will also be present.

Most observers have described this election campaign as one of the roughest and most negative in the country’s 20 years of independence. Thus there are fears of increased political friction and even of violence in some areas.

Alongside ethnic Macedonians, the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Albanians, are also electing their favourites.

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

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

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