Contenders of the main Macedonian parties, VMRO-DPMNE and the Social Democratic Union (SDSM), are expected to be confirmed by the central committees of the parties. Stevo Pendarovski of the SDSM will run for a second term, while Gordana Siljanovska-Davkova of VMRO-DPMNE is running again after five years. In 2019, she lost against Pendarovski.
Albanians are represented by Bujar Osmani of the Democratic Union for Integration (DUI) and Arben Taravari of the opposition now known with the motto “VLEN”.
These candidates are expected to garner tens of thousands of votes in the first round, but it is unlikely that either of them will advance to the second round, as so far, it has not happened that an Albanian faces a Macedonian contender in the runoff for president. However, it is the Albanian electorate that helps elect the president in this country.
To win the elections in the first round, more than fifty percent of the electorate’s votes are needed. North Macedonia has just over 1.8 million voters, and there is a trend of declining interest in voting.
Analyst Xhelal Neziri assessed that the presidential elections will be tense because they are held only two weeks before the parliamentary elections.
“The first round of presidential elections will be a kind of poll, or weighing of political parties, and a kind of moment that can be exploited and materialized for parliamentary elections afterward. If a candidate wins the presidential elections, then the political party will try to build a winning narrative, promote euphoria for parliamentary elections. For this reason, I think these elections will be tense, but considering the profile of the candidates running, I think it will be interesting and substantive,” says Neziri.
The DUI is entering the campaign with rhetoric about the danger posed to the country by negative and hybrid Russian influences, while the Albanian opposition aims primarily to defeat the DUI, which has been in power for twenty years.
North Macedonia is a parliamentary democracy, although the president is elected by direct vote, his powers are limited.
Albanian parties are now insisting that the president be elected by two-thirds of the votes in parliament, but this may require waiting for the next mandate.
Neziri says that this is a longstanding demand for Albanian parties to increase the chances of having an Albanian as president, but he does not see much hope in the contenders and Albanian parties in the upcoming race. The analyst has dilemmas about the effectiveness of their offer to vote for the idea and not the candidate.
“It is a kind of paradox because both DUI and VLEN have come out with their candidates, while they seek a change in the electoral system for the election of the president. In a way, they have started the race with pessimism, with a result that from now on they predict they will not achieve their goal. But they promote that through these votes they will gather, they will try to articulate their demand for a change in the Electoral Code, that is, for a change in the way the president is elected,” concludes Neziri.
