Polls open as North Macedonia faces runoff presidential ballot and parliamentary elections

(8 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Skopje, North Macedonia - 8 May 2024
1. Polling station staff preparing room ahead of polls opening
2. Mid of ballot box
3. Various of voters casting ballots
STORYLINE:
Voters in Northern Macedonia go to the polls Wednesday for a double election - parliamentary and presidential - following a campaign in which the country's aspirations to join the European Union have played a central role.
The office of Prime Minister wields the real power, and the president is largely ceremonial, so the parliamentary election is the more important of the two contests.
The opposition center-right coalition, which is pushing back against neighboring Bulgaria's conditions for the country's EU candidacy, is favored to win both elections.
The election for the unicameral parliament takes place in a single round, while the presidential election is the runoff of a two-round contest that began in April with the center-right candidate scoring a large lead over the center-left incumbent.
More than 1,700 candidates are competing for the unicameral parliament’s 120 seats.
There are also three seats reserved for expatriates, but in the last election, in 2020, turnout was too low to fill those seats.
The month-long campaign has focused on fighting corruption, improving the slugging economy and alleviating poverty, but the main hot-button issue has been over North Macedonia’s struggle to join the European Union.
Demands by neighboring Bulgaria that North Macedonia’s Bulgarian minority be official recognized in the country’s constitution have been supported by the ruling center-left, but blasted by the center-right opposition as capitulation to Bulgaria.
Formal EU membership negotiations with North Macedonia - and fellow-candidate Albania - began in 2022 and the process is expected to take years.
North Macedonia has been cited by both the European Commission and the U.S. government as having a corruption problem, and the opposition has seized on the issue during the campaign.
A 2023 European Commission report said corruption “remains prevalent in many areas” of North Macedonia.
The main two blocs are multi-party coalitions: The center-left coalition led by the SDSM, "For a European Future,” consists of 14 parties. The center-right opposition led by VMRO-DPMNE, “Your Macedonia,” has 22.
A splinter Social Democrat Party, ZNAM (“For Our Macedonia”) whose leader, Maksim Dimitriavski, won 9.5% of the vote in the first round of the presidential election, could play kingmaker.
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