Syndicate: Fair or Fraud?

["Arthur Bueno" <abueno@v2.nl>]

>Date: Tue, 16 Nov 1999 17:04:04 +0100
>From: misko <misko@scca.org.mk>
>Subject: Fair or Fraud?


>
>Presidential elections in Macedonia
>Fair or Fraud?
>
>The second round of the Presidential elections in Macedonia, on Sunday
14th, raised questions of
>irregularities and possible election forgery, as it is already becoming
customary in the countries
>of South-East Europe.
>The difference seems at first glance pretty obvious as Boris Trajkovski,
the candidate of the ruling party
>VMRO - DPMNE got around 592,000 votes.
>Tito Petkovski, the candidate of the opposition Social Democratic Union of
Macedonia got around 514,000 votes.
>The results are quite surprising as in the first round, with six candidates
running for the position,
>Petkovski beat Trajkovski quite severely by around 112,000 votes.
>Even in this final election round Petkovski wiped out Trajkovski in
practically all
>of the counties where ethnic Macedonians are a majority.
>One other surprise of this second circle was a turnout of the voters at
about 70 percent.
>This is especially interesting knowing that the leading officials in the
"Democratic Alternative" of Vasil Tupurkovski,
>who turned third in the presidential race of the first circle, warned of
irregularities
>in the first circle and said they would boycott the elections, practically
turning their voters to that direction.
>
>The Social Democrats accused that the elections in Western Macedonia, in
the regions where the ethnic Albanians live,
>were completely falsified. They claimed that at over 200 polling places the
election committees did not function
>and that members of the election committees from the part of the Social
Democrats
>had been forcefully been thrownout, so that the elections were conducted
solely
>by activists of the DPA (ethnic Albanian coalition partner of VMRO-DPMNE).
>They further on accused the DPA activists of simply putting ballots in the
boxes without the presence of the voters.
>They supported this with the statement that according to the statistics the
turnover of the
>Albanian population was ranging from 90 percent to 100 percent, which is
astonishing.
>They also stated that Boris Trajkovski had received in the second round of
elections more votes
>by the ethnic  Albanian electorate than Nedzipi and Halili, both of the
Albanian candidates together, in the first round.
>
>The election commission so far said that casted ballots outnumbered listed
voters in five electoral units.
>
>All this did not prevent the Prime Minister Georgievski to declare a
victory of Boris Trajkovski late Sunday, even though
>the State Election Committee will not issue official results until
Thursday. VMRO_DPMNE continued with a celebration
>late Sunday evening on the streets in Skopje.
>
>The Social Democrats responded with a massive protest meeting on Monday
evening, saying that the victory proclamation
>of the Prime Minister is indecent, as it was obvious that the election
results were forged.
>
>To make it more interesting the leaders of the position and opposition,
Georgievski and Crvenkovski,
>faced each other by a  TV duel on the Macedonian State Television
>(regarded by the Crvenkovski and the Social Democrats as a VMRO-DPMNE party
television),
>where the issue of the falsifying the elections was raised by the Social
Democrat and
>denied by the VMRO-DPMNE president, who said that we can perhaps speak
about
>a few minor incidents but nothing of the level that the Social democrats
are declaring.
>
>The State Election Committee is to issue a statement with the official
numbers on Thursday.
>
>TV duels are to continue.
>
>--------------------------------------
>Melentie Pandilovski
>--------------------------------------
>

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