Republic of Macedonia

Political Parties

Democratic Party

"On July 27, last year, we started with financial and premises problems. It was mostly a voluntary work, done along with other professional occupations. Only individuals had a shorter or longer experience, but we all had a big desire to co-ordinate our promised alternative with the wishes of those who really yearned for changes. Our first assignment was to complete the party infrastructure: forming of local organisations, to be accompanied with a simultaneous promotion of basic party program goals. We have thus far formed 27 local branches. The 28th will be formed tomorrow. In the meantime, the party youth organisation formed 12 youth committees, and the local branches founded over 200 committees. We visited each of the formed committees 6 times in average. This means we have undertaken (not counting trips to youth organisations and several visits to larger villages) about 170 trips throughout Macedonia, passing over 50,000 kilometres. We have actually spent 5 months and 20 days on the road, travelling almost every other day of the past year.

During the same period, we also travelled to Canada and the U.S., meeting some 30 respectable officials of foreign countries. We issued 20 public announcements and held 15 press- conferences. We also gave numerous interviews for foreign and domestic daily and weekly papers. We never counted the answers to numberless called for and not called for letters of criticism addressed to us.

Our membership grew by the day, to include people of all ages and all social classes, with remarkable percentage of middle- class citizens and those supporting private businesses. At the moment, there are 12,600 of us, meaning we are growing by 1000- 1100 members each month. By the time of this fall's elections, our prediction of a 17-20,000 membership is highly likely to come true.

The political rating of our party also grew by the day. We were assured of this by polls conducted by others, continuous influx of new members, and high attendance of our meetings. All this encouraged us to take part, although without completed party structure, in the additional elections of a parliament deputy from the electoral unit 103, Kisela Voda, Skopje. We came in second.

A lot is still to be done, especially in regard to completion of our structure. As well as in regard to communication with other parties and democracy in general. And even more in communication with citizens and the public in conditions of pioneer nature of opposition media and huge govt control over the media.

We are also faced with a great task of further shaping of our program, which must always offer better and quicker solutions for problems, than those offered by other political competitors. We have a great task to show that our project is the most democratic and most prosperous in the Republic of Macedonia.