Macedonia Opposition Mull Next Steps After Poll Defeat

All options are still open, SDSM says | Photo by: AP/Boris Grdanoski

Macedonia's Social Democratic Party, SDSM, is to take a decision on Tuesday on what to do next following its defeat in Sunday's elections.

One option up for consideration is for the party to refuse to take up its seats in parliament.

“We will soon decide whether to return the legislative seats that we won. The party executive board meets this evening and will decide all future steps,” the SDSM spokesperson, Petre Silegov, told Balkan Insight.

According to initial results, the ruling VMRO DPMNE party of Nikola Gruevski won 61 of the 123 seats in parliament, and the SDSM 34.

The governing ethnic Albanian party, the Democratic Union for Integration, DUI, won 19 seats and the opposition ethnic Albanian Democratic Party of Albanians, DPA, seven.

The newly-formed Citizen’s Option for Macedonia, GROM, and the National Democratic Rebirts, NDP, won one seat each.

As voting closed on Sunday, the SDSM alleged serious violations, as a result of which it refused to recognize the election process, demanding a formation of a caretaker government to organize new elections.

Silegov said filing objections to the State Electoral Commission, SEC, for irregularities on election day was a waste of time.

“That wouldn’t make any sense because we are not disputing the election day alone but the entire election process, which is a much more serious issue," he said.

"If you look at the reports of the election monitors, including the one from the OSCE/ODIHR, it becomes apparent that the situation has never been this bad,” he added.

In its report on Monday, the OSCE/ODIHR monitors said Macedonia failed to meet some important OSCE commitments and that these shortcomings overshadowed what was...

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