Macedonia Mulls New Elections for Vacant Seats

Macedonian leaders are contemplating holding new elections for seats vacated by the opposition in parliament.

Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski who is holding talks on forming a new government, on Tuesday said that after the opposition MPs resigned, parliament "has no choice but to verify those resignations at the next session and call fresh elections for the vacant seats".

The opposition legislators, who resigned from their seats in a dispute over the outcome of the April general elections as fraudulent, condemned the proposal.

“Additional elections under a proportional election model would put us in an absurd situation whereby the same people would be given a chance to vote twice and their votes would be represented in parliament multiple times,” Renata Deskoska, who was recently elected as a legislator from the main opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM, complained.

Last week, Deskoska joined her colleagues and also resigned from her seat. She told Deutsche Welle that new elections for the empty seats would not only be legally problematic but would also create a "fake opposition" in parliament composed of MPs from tiny political parties.

For the purposes of general elections, Macedonia is divided into six electoral units, each contributing 20 legislators to the 123-seat parliament. The three remaining seats are elected by voters in the diaspora.

The parties propose lists of 20 candidates in each of the six electoral units. The more votes that a party wins in each of the six units, the more candidates from that list enter parliament.

If additional elections are now called, only the 34 now-vacant seats won previously by the opposition will have to be filled.

In the first electoral unit, the...