6 June 2011
Macedonia's ruling conservatives have won snap polls promising further economic and political reforms that would speed up Skopje's entry into the EU and NATO, preliminary results showed Monday.
The VMRO-DPMNE-dominated coalition of Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski won just over 39 percent of the vote while its main rival, the leftist SDSM grouping, took 33 percent, preliminary results issued by the state electoral commission showed.
"Macedonia has chosen reforms that we have started ... we all dream of Macedonia becoming a member of the European Union," Gruevski told his cheering supporters late Sunday.Despite fears of incidents during the vote, only minor irregularities were registered, officials said.
The international observers of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, said the polls were "competitive, transparent and well-administered throughout the country," describing them as "overwhelmingly positive."
"These elections have laid a cornerstone for a stable, democratic future," said Roberto Battelli, who led the OSCE observer mission.
However, the monitors warned of "blurring of the line between state and party" and called on Skopje to pay "further attention" to avoid such moves in future.
According to the estimates, Gruevski will have around 55 deputies in 123-seat parliament, short of the outright majority to form his third government.He was expected to invite his junior partner in the incumbent government, the ethnic Albanian Democratic Union of Integration, DUI, - also tipped to win most of the votes among its community - to form the new cabinet.
The country's ethnic Albanians, who make up one quarter of the 2.2 million population, insist that joining the EU will help ensure there is no repeat of the inter-ethnic conflict that shook the country a decade ago.
The elections were marked by a relatively high turnout of 63.3 percent.
