A preliminary assessment of the Parliamentary elections held on May 8 is that they were held in a peaceful and democratic atmosphere, without incidents and without significant irregularities.

Overall, citizens with the right to vote had the opportunity to express their electoral will freely, in accordance with the Electoral Code and democratic principles and standards.

However, having in consideration the principle of Zero tolerance for election irregularities that CIVIL follows in its monitoring, several types of irregularities that were observed on May 8 should be noted. CIVIL’s position is that those cases, registered on the very day of voting, do not significantly impact the general assessment, which is positive.

These assessments refer to the short-term monitoring that covers the election silence and the election day.

The analyses and assessments resulting from the long-term monitoring of the election process and social-political conditions and trends are already in an advanced phase of preparation and will be presented at the beginning of June this year.

Several reports in regards to what was happening in the polling stations themselves cast a shadow over election day. It is obvious that part of the members of the election boards throughout the country – are either insufficiently trained, or they indulged in fulfilling political agendas, by agitating, that is, trying to influence part of the voters. Depending on which political camp they were engaged from, some of the members of the election boards in the polling stations that CIVIL’s observers covered, supported or tried to prevent the boycott of the Presidential Elections.

There are also cases of violation of the election silence and violation of the secrecy of voting, and in some cases, failure to act is noted in regards to the violation of the election silence by the observers, party or civil. An illustrative case is the one from a polling station in the “Prolet” kindergarten in the neighborhood of Kozle in the Municipality of Karposh, Skopje, where the observer played the anthem of VMRO-DPMNE on her phone, in the middle of the polling station. There was a reaction only after a citizen had made a remark.

Furthermore, it can be noted that citizens are not sufficiently informed about the procedure of voting for president and for parliament, especially reinforced by the lack of knowledge about the procedures also on the part of the election boards. Around 50 calls from citizens were in regards to the fact that it was not clear whether the Election Boards had the right to ask voters whether they would take one or two ballots. This is a signal that the procedures and voting rights are not explained well enough in the preparatory period, namely, the SEC’s campaign on civic education.

Infamous is the incident that was caused by a member of the Election Board in the village of Janchishta, Municipality of Jegunovce, where an observer of CIVIL was verbally attacked with slander and insults against the organization. This case was brought to the attention of the SEC and the international community.

The elections on May 7 and 8 passed in the sign of violation of the election silence. Party activists, and even officials, as well as anonymous profiles on the social networks known to Civil’s monitoring team as party propagandists – waged a real war on the social networks.

This finding refers to all participants in the parliamentary elections held on May 8.

CIVIL deployed 80 mobile short-term observers throughout the country.

CIVIL also carried out long-term monitoring of the election process, starting from January 28, when the technical government of the country, in charge of implementing the election process, was elected.

During that period, two sharply opposed political options are noted, dominated by nationalist narratives, as opposed to the pro-EU option.

At the same time, during 2023, CIVIL participated in the Working group for Amendments to the Electoral Code, and in parallel to that also conducted monitoring of the socio-political processes and trends, with a focus on disinformation, nationalist, anti-Western and anti-democratic narratives, as well as hybrid threats against our country.

The organization regularly publishes its reports and analyses on the CIVIL MEDIA media platform in Macedonian, Albanian and English.

Translated by: N. Cvetkovska