Macedonia's Knife-Edge Election Ends In Uncertainty

Macedonia's general election result remains in deadlock after the latest results suggested that while the main ruling VMRO DPMNE party won more votes than the opposition Social Democrats, SDSM, it is not clear whether this will translate into more seats in parliament.

"We will have a projection of [the number of] MPs during Monday," the head of the Electoral Commission, DIK, Aleksandar Cicakovski, told a press conference at 3am Monday.

The main domestic election monitor, MOST, an NGO, also declined to give any projections about which camp won more seats.

"Due to the narrow results and the high margin of error, we do not dare give projections. It is too close to call," MOST head Darko Aleksov said at MOST's closing press conference.

After a count of 99.72 per cent of the votes by the DIK, VMRO DPMNE party won 452,709, or 38.06 per cent, while the SDSM won 436,469, or 36.69 per cent.

However, Macedonia is not a single electoral unit. Seats are distributed among six electoral units, each contributing 20 MPs to the 120-seat parliament. It is now up to the DIK to determine the exact number of seats for each party.

The parliament should have 123 seats, with three additional MPs coming from the votes cast abroad. However, these seats will remain empty due to the low turnout in the diaspora.

Rough estimates by analysts and the media suggest both parties could win 51 seats, which would result in a tie, despite the advantage in votes for the ruling party of just over 1 per cent.

However, even if the ruling party manages to snatch one or two more seats than 51, this does not guarantee that it will be able to form a majority of more than 61 seats.

Albanians are potential kingmakers:<...