The interview with the Head of ODIHR Election Observation Mission to North Macedonia, Ms. Tana de Zulueta, discovers its main mission goals, the findings on the Local Elections so far, as well as the chief challenges to the election process. Special focus of the interview with de Zulueta was the gender equality and the women participation in politics.
CIVIL MEDIA: Ms. Zulueta thank you for this interview, in the midst of your very dynamic agenda. What are the main goals of ODIHR’s mission observation in North Macedonia this time at the local elections?
TANA DE ZULUETA: The mandate of the OSCE ODIHR election observation is always the same. We come to assess the conduct of the election for its compliance with ODIHR commitments, with international standards and with national law. That is quite a fast changing picture because the law has changed since we were last here. We are looking at the introduction of biometric voter identification technology, and this was introduced in a late stage in the preparations, following the rollout, the training of the polling staff and seeing how. The other novelty, which we are following, is the roll out of the biometric voter identification devices, which arrived late, at the ODIHR came late and have put some pressure on the administration in order to train. So, it’s something we are following and like all the voters of the Republic of North Macedonia, we will wait and see what happens on election day.
CIVIL MEDIA: Well, you already have your short-term ODIHR election observers arrived and they will be deployed already, or have they already been deployed? Are they having any special tasks, or is that all that in the common well-known mandate of ODIHR?
TANA DE ZULUETA: No, everything is different now, with the special precautions we all have to take because of the pandemic. So, we trained our short-term observers, there are 126 short-term observers. They arrived today, from 23 participating states, good international coverage, and we trained them, or at least we briefed them online on Monday and Tuesday. We had to time it, so that we could be talking to people who were in Zurich and in California. So, for some it was morning, for some it was evening. And we briefed them on exactly what their tasks are. They are an important component of our mission, and one that was missing the last time that ODIHR observed in the country, because for the parliamentary elections it was not possible, because of the pandemic. Many stakeholders have welcomed the fact that they will be observing systematic observation of the vote, of the count and the tabulation of the results. In addition, the first complaints, if there are any. And this will enable us to have statistics on the conduct of the election, which will help, I hope, to give a good picture of the elections.
CIVIL MEDIA: How would you describe the election process so far? What are your main findings, well, apart from the biometrics arriving late, and the legislation being introduced quite late?
TANA DE ZULUETA: The amendments to the Electoral Code were very late, and we already drew attention to this fact in our interim report, and of course, this is contrary to international good practice, as well as commitments. They address some ODIHR recommendations, but others remain outstanding.
CIVIL MEDIA: Such as?
TANA DE ZULUETA: Well, I think the most important one, the overarching recommendation, which remains in place, then we will see after the elections what else we would like to recommend, is that this Election Code, which is the result of successive adjustments over the years, a sort of ongoing conversation, it has to be pulled together, because it is incomplete and inconsistent. Sometimes the articles are not even in line with each other. It’s difficult for the administration to implement, and to be certain, and it’s difficult for the voters and the candidates to be operating with legal certainty. This is very important, and I very much hope that political parties will find a consensus in order to enable the citizenry to have something that should a truly functioning Electoral Code.
CIVIL MEDIA: Well, final question. Why do you think that our institutions are failing to meet these recommendations by ODIHR?
TANA DE ZULUETA: It’s hard to tell. I suppose historic question really. It might boil down to political will. Building consensus is not simple. There have been slim majorities in parliament for some time, but I think it’s most important that common ground is found on issues like the conduct of elections, which is a way for all the participants to protect themselves, rather than to seek advantage, which is a zero sum game in politics. If parliament finds time, it would be a gift.
HIGHLIGHT: GENDER EQUALITY
I was struck when I arrived that out of the 80 mayors who are running currently for office, only six are women. That is a very low figure. Given the importance of the mayor in the political system and the administrative system of the Republic of North Macedonia it is regrettable.
CIVIL MEDIA: There are very few female candidates in our elections again. Apart from being very few, for which I would like to ask you to comment, they are also targeted by tremendous hate speech, gender based hate speech, which is targeting the very few female candidates in these local elections. What are your comments on both cases?
TANA DE ZULUETA: Well, one of the things that the ODIHR does look at is the participation of women in political life. And so we try to look at that across the board, to understand, you know, voters, but also candidates, political parties, how engaged are women. At first glance, the picture is not so bleak, because we have a quota system in this country for councils and parliament, which has guaranteed the minimum that the law foresees. And so on that front, the picture is not so bleak.
However, when you look at mayors, I was struck when I arrived that out of the 80 mayors who are running currently for office, only six are women. That is a very low figure. Given the importance of the mayor in the political system and the administrative system of the Republic of North Macedonia it is regrettable.
The number of candidates for mayor reflects the situation, which is not evolving in a positive sense. The parties did not seek out women candidates and they admitted as much candidly to us. We only have out of I think 312 candidates – 25 women. Therefore, these 25 women have to do very well just to keep the 8 percent that we had before. And some of them are clearly put there for a show, if you see what I mean.
The party that puts them up in some cases knows that they will not win, but they will improve the party’s image. We tried to understand why, and I am sure that you and others in the country would answer that question better than I would. Nevertheless, interestingly, the longer our observers were in the regions, talking to people, visiting the villages, the clear it became that the obstacles to women participation are deep, and they are cultural, as well as economic.
Often, a male relative accompanied the women candidates that were speaking to us. And often, if there were two people answering the questions, the man spoke, even if the woman was more important in theory. Therefore, we realized that women are up against a lot of obstacles, of those invisible kinds.
But there is another obstacle that might discourage them, and as you mentioned, the attacks, gender based attacks, on social media in particular. Women are feeling very vulnerable to this. The reputational damage for them, and society, is much. They are more vulnerable than their male competitors are, and their attackers know it, so they go for them. And it is not a pretty spectacle.
CIVIL MEDIA: What do you think this society, and the institutions, should do?
TANA DE ZULUETA: I think that if there is awareness, and leadership awareness, to lead by example and to speak publically against this on the part of influential and important political leaders, that it must not be just the women complaining, it must be the men complaining.
CIVIL MEDIA: And probably the institutions they keep the law in their hands and can sanction those that are committing legal violations, and attacking women.
TANA DE ZULUETA: In some cases, the power of these social media is that these can be anonymous, but sometimes not. And interestingly there haven’t been complaints filed because of reluctance of the women themselves to take these cases to court. This is regrettable and it is partly to avoid publicity, I imagine, partly fearing that this would not bring them redress.
Interviewer: Xhabir Deralla
Camera: Atanas Petrovski
Video editing: Arian Mehmeti
Transcription: Natasha Cvetkovska
