Macedonia Opposition Spurns Plan to Clean Electoral Roll

Macedonia's main opposition Social Democratic Party, SDSM - which has boycotted parliament since the April elections, claiming the government parties won them by fraud - declined to take part in Friday's DIK session, which proposed door-to-door checkups on whether voters are who they say they are.

"There is no purpose in discussing something... that we think should be discussed between the government and the opposition in order to ensure the minimum conditions for fair and democratic elections," said Damjan Mancevski, the SDSM vice-president and member of the DIK's task group that convened on Friday.

The DIK considered whether - and how - to check opposition allegations that the electoral roll contains numerous fictitious voters, added to the list in several municipalities in order to tip the election scales in the government's favour.

"The plan is to check up on the spot. The proposed action plan involves several smaller pilot municipalities where teams would go from door to door and check voters at their addresses, whether they indeed live there and have biometrical IDs," the head of the body, Bedredin Ibrahimi, said.

The electoral roll has been a matter of controversy in Macedonia for some time. The OSCE, which has monitored Macedonian elections in the past, has described it as unusually large for a country of just over 2 million people.

In the 2013 local elections, as well as in the April 2014 early general and presidential elections, allegations of irregularities linked to the electoral roll marred the vote.

The Social Democrats accused the ruling VMRO DPMNE party of rigging the elections in Skopje and other areas by permitting organised voting by ethnic Macedonians from Albania. They were allegedly given...