Accessibility links

Breaking News

Macedonia's Ruling Party Wins Elections


Conservative Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski (file photo)
Conservative Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski (file photo)
Macedonia's election commission says the ruling conservative party has won the country's parliamentary elections.

The commission said the VMRO-DPMNE party won 42.27 percent of the votes in the April 27 polls, based on more than 50 percent of the vote count.

Incumbent Gjorge Ivanov of the VMRO-DPMNE won a fresh five-year mandate for a largely ceremonial presidential post with 56 percent of the vote.

Earlier, Macedonia's main opposition Social Democratic Party said it won't recognize the result of the elections, claiming that they were neither fair nor democratic.

The election commision said the Social Democrats received almost 23 percent of the parliamentary vote and their candidate, Stevo Pendarovski, won 38 percent of the presidential vote.

The ethnic Albanian Democratic Union for Integrations (DUI), the conservatives' partner in the outgoing government, is credited with 16 percent of the parliamentary votes.

The election commission put turnout at 60 percent.

No major incident was reported.

Two domestic monitoring missions reported irregularities, including people voting in groups and political parties busing voters to polling stations.

International observers will present their assessment on April 28.
Based on reporting by AFP and dpa

RFE/RL has been declared an "undesirable organization" by the Russian government.

If you are in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine and hold a Russian passport or are a stateless person residing permanently in Russia or the Russia-controlled parts of Ukraine, please note that you could face fines or imprisonment for sharing, liking, commenting on, or saving our content, or for contacting us.

To find out more, click here.

XS
SM
MD
LG