European observers note significant problems with the local elections

Opposition performed better than expected

At a press conference observers of the November 17 local elections in the Republic of Macedonia estimated that 25% of the eligible voters could not cast their ballots because they were not included in the electoral lists. The 12 members of the delegation stopped short of making a final judgment about the fairness of the elections and limited their statement only to the facts they encountered. The observations of the monitors support the statements of the opposition led by conservative VMRO-DPMNE about the poll irregularities. The opposition further charged the ruling Social Democratic Alliance of President Gligorov and Prime minister Crvenkovski that they organized a campaign to lower the voter turnout and then rig the vote.

The Federal electoral commission denied the existence of significant problems with the vote. The chairwoman of the commission Lilyana Ristova blamed the voters for not checking their names in the electoral lists beforehand, despite the cases in which voters claimed to had been included in the lists a week before the elections but later disappearing from them. Even some candidates were not included in the electoral lists.

Although the final results are expected late on Tuesday, the opposition appears to have done better than expected by winning in four key town councils and leading in the three out of four districts of the capital Skopje. It also managed to be leading in some regions supposedly supporting the ruling party. The Social Democrats still seem to have won the largest number of town councils in the first round. It appears that there will be a runoff in the majority of the councils on December 1.

The opposition also alleged poll rigging at the last parliamentary elections and eventually boycotted the second round and the parliament of the country. At the time, however, the international observers acknowledged much lesser irregularities and refused to declare the vote unfair altogether. This in part could be explained by the successful attempt of the governing coalition to cast themselves abroad as the only guarantor of the economic reforms, ethnic peace in the country, a pro-Western foreign policy, and the only side ready to go for a compromise in the dispute with Greece. The current privatization campaign started by the government was marred by charges of corruption and is said to benefit the company managers, often associated with the Social Democrats and their predecessors from the times of Communist Yugoslavia. This was the reason why the opposition called that campaign "unjust" and led to a paradox when a right wing VMRO-DPMNE appears on the surface to be less supportive of the free market reforms than the leftist Social Democratic Alliance. Now the opposition hopes that a strong showing in the local poll will make a strong case for early parliamentary elections. A petition drive started by the opposition several months ago gathered over 200,000 signatures but was blocked by the current parliament and is bogged down in the Constitutional court.

Editorial by Plamen Bliznakov based on information from Reuters