North Macedonia’s Social Democrat party, led by former Prime Minister Zoran Zaev has declared victory following yesterday’s election.
With four-fifths of ballots counted, the pro-European Union party had a small lead with 36.84% of the vote. The nationalist VMRO DPMNE led second with 35.47% of the vote while the ethnic Albania party, the Democratic Union of Integration party came third with 10.2% of the vote.
Zaev’s party did not manage to attain a majority and it will require weeks, if not longer, of coalition talks before a government can be formed.
During the hours of vote counting, the electoral commission’s website was down. It took three hours for it to be restored. In the meantime, counting was streamed live on YouTube. Oliver Derkovski, president of the Commission said the website had been hacked but that the count was not impacted.
This is the 9th general election since North Macedonia declared its independence from Yugoslavia in 1991.
Zaev had resigned in January after the EU failed to give the country a start date for EU membership talks. The PM had also changed the country’s name from Macedonia to North Macedonia in 2018 to clear the way for its NATO accession.
The elections were originally scheduled for April but were postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The vote took place despite high numbers of infected and casualties. With a population of two million, there have been more than 8500 cases and 393 deaths.
Election authorities estimated the turnout at just 50.8%, lower than in previous elections.
